Saga
by Teyke
Summary: Tony falls into the closing portal, but he doesn't make it out the other side before it snaps shut. Trapped in a universe where time runs oddly when mortals blink, and accompanied by a Not-Quite-Dead Steve Rogers, Tony mouths off to a goddess of death, goes cross-dressing with Thor and Loki - and may have caused the end of the universe as they know it.
1. Gylfaginning

The transition was almost instantaneous.

One moment, Tony was riding a nuke in a straight line up, barely missing the glass of his own tower (if it was his tower anymore; four letters gone and only the A remaining, and if he wasn't so good at math, he might think that probabilistically interesting). Then the colour blue intensified and the arc reactor hiccupped. He didn't have time to snap anything to JARVIS, not that there was any point, anyway, when the trip was one-way. Light and colour vanished into black: space, dark and terrible, completely unlike the space he saw from orbit whenever he went up to bring cookies to the astronauts on the ISS and hijack their equipment (in his defense: they were _really good_ cookies). The only _up_ was defined by the gravity from Earth leaking through the portal, but there was nonetheless also a sense of _down_, as the alien mothership loomed over him.

_"Sir, Ms._ _Po..."_ JARVIS apologized, already going, going, gone. The portal had – done something. He could feel the arc reactor cycling down, derailed by interstellar transit – huh, who knew that the two wouldn't mesh? Part of him itched to take the problem down to his workshop and fix it, already considering the type of interference it could be and new ways to shield against it. Part of him regretted that he'd never get the chance to do so.

The nuke soared forward even as he fell back and the mothership bloomed into light, so bright that the stars faded as his eyes adjusted. The lack of sound reminded him of the old black-and-white reels of weapons demonstrations from eras gone by – death in near-perfect silence, interrupted only by the faint clicks of the film reel, of the armour's movement. He was far closer than any living person should be to ground zero of a nuclear detonation, but that didn't matter. At this distance, the armour would be sufficient to protect him from the radiation. That wasn't why it didn't matter.

The battle would go on without him, but Pepper would be safe. A few thousand foot soldiers and a couple of tank-ship-worms made for a pretty paltry planetary invasion force – she'd be fine, she'd be okay. Tony just wished he'd made the leap that Natasha had earlier – he could have grabbed Loki's sceptre long before she had, shut down the portal and limited the casualties to maybe a couple dozen. Of _course_ like energy couldn't be shut out. He'd gotten sloppy in his science.

The arc reactor stuttered to a halt. Tony closed his eyes and let death pull him downwards.

Below him, out of sight, the portal began to close. If he'd seen the delay, he would have snapped at them for not closing it earlier – Manhattan was right _there_ and if the fall-out reached the portal it would kill a lot of people, including Natasha and Selvig, standing directly beneath the entrance. He would have wondered why they'd waited.

Tony fell through in the same instant the portal snapped shut. Blue light burst over him, blindingly bright, so that even through the faceplate and his closed eyes it caused spots to dance in his vision. He jolted back to full awareness – the oxygen-rich onboard air supply helped immensely with that, even if it made his nose itch – and blinked furiously. When he could see again, he was staring at something entirely new.

"JARVIS, what're we – " he said before he remembered himself. A forgivable mistake: it took even him a moment to process what he was seeing, a moment to look before the stars – which were still the wrong stars, but were no longer _wrong_, the way they had been behind the Chitauri ship. Now instead they seemed a great deal more magnificent, and it was easy to see that each was its own sun, although they shed no more light than the average set of stars viewed from Earth. But in front of them, lit by their brilliance, was something that looked remarkably... wooden? "What the hell?"

It extended far below and above his field of view, twisting and winding like some giant root. A _tree_ root. Tony gaped at it, tried to tilt his head and change his angle of view, and was reminded of his imminent death by the way that the unpowered armour resisted his movement.

With effort, he managed to turn his head from side to side and saw two more roots, one over each shoulder, stretching out downward in the same direction that he was still falling. Without a reference for size it was almost impossible at first to tell how large the things were – but if he was falling with any appreciable speed, then they were – Tony swallowed. They were _cosmic_. Well, how fitting.

No, really, how _fucked up_. Yggdrasil, _seriously_? Trees did not grow in space. No matter how tree-like the thing looked, it was clearly _not a tree_. He contemplated, briefly, the old-age possibility of seeing something in 'a form he was comfortable with' – but one, if he was going to face his cosmic doom, he would not imagine it as a goddamned _tree_, and two, he'd never been one to believe in that bullshit. The subconscious took stimuli and made it comprehensible, but it didn't take good old electromagnetic radiation and tune it to completely different frequencies that just so happened to match up with those reflected by a _tree_ unless he was on some serious shits and giggles, and he hadn't gotten around to putting an auto-inject med system into the Mark VII.

Pepper probably would have loved the sight – he wished he could have taken a picture to show her. She always liked the shots of weird things that he saw while in the armour – well, when they were kept G-rated, anyway. Not that he was ever going to get the chance to pass on another picture, but – awkwardly, he twisted around, examining the various repulsor nodes of the armour. Sadly, all of the lenses were dim – whatever had drained the suit's arc reactor, along with his own, had also taken out all of the tertiary reserves. There was nothing left to power the camera with.

He huffed out a laugh, even though there was no one around to hear him – well, there were the stars, and the giant tree roots he was falling past, but sound didn't travel in space. It came out tinged with bitterness despite his best efforts. "So _fitting_," he muttered. "Not even the alien invasion that did it, no, it's some trigger-happy military extremist dick with a hard-on for nuclear power, and now I get to die looking at a giant hippie _shit_ – "

Reflexively, Tony gasped the last word and nearly ended up choking on it. _Something_ had moved out in the distance. He could see only one curve of it, curling out from behind one of the massive roots, blocking off the light of a few stars. The others nearby seemed suddenly feeble, diminished by the presence of the _thing_. The curve edged outward, and he realized it wasn't a curve, it was an impossibility, a _true_ impossibility, way beyond a mere tree in space: the edge was that of a non-infinite Koch snowflake, a differentiable Weierstrass function, smoothed out but _he could see that it wasn't_ –

His stomach heaved and he shut his eyes tight, fighting down the urge to vomit – he was dying, but if he was going to get his heroic death after all, go out in a blaze of glory, then he refused to do so and _also_ drown from his own puke clogging up his helmet. And like hell was he going to manually pop the faceplate and let his eyes explode as the moisture ripped from them. Even if he'd been willing to ignore that indignity he wouldn't have been able to; his eyelids made scant protection against the sight of that _thing_, and the faceplate not much better, but it was some protection, _any,_ and now, yes, he could understand why kittens had hatched in Loki's brain. Thor had reported that he'd fallen from the Bifrost, fallen through worlds, and if this had been what Loki had seen there – Tony was pretty sure he'd have gone crazy too if he wasn't about to die. He could only squeeze his eyes shut and hope, desperately, that the thing didn't come out from behind the root, that he died first, that he'd be spared the full sight of it. His brain scrambled through the files he'd read, desperately trying to distract him from comprehending what he was sharing this strange space with, and finally threw up a name, just before he hit the ground he hadn't seen coming up beneath him.

_Níðhöggr._

* * *

His vision had gone grey.

Blurry and aching, it took Tony a minute to realize he'd been unconscious: the transition had (probably) not been instantaneous. How much more time had he lost? Thirty seconds? A few minutes? Although if the alternative was staring at the dragon – and not one of those fire-breathing, princess-kidnapping, knight-eating sorts – then he had to admit that unconsciousness was the kinder alternative. But if the distinct greyness above him was any indication, then he was no longer falling between the roots of Yggdrasil.

It took more effort than Tony would have liked to admit, but he sat up. Every damn time he wanted to be able to add on more toys to the armour, and forced himself to scale back, to keep the weight parameters within what he could physically move on his own – yeah, it was worth it. He'd go to his death _mobile_, thanks.

"Anthony Edward Stark," a voice intoned. He couldn't tell from where; the internal speakers weren't online and the voice seemed to vibrate right through his helmet. But she wasn't in front of him – in front of him was a whole fat lot of _nothing_ – so he struggled to his feet and turned around. A moment later he was wishing that he could power at least one repulsor. Most of what had been behind him was mostly just nothing as well: bland, grey landscape, filled with bland, grey mist; he might as well have been standing in the Construct – darker than usual version, maybe, but equally featureless. It made the only anomaly stand out – not that said anomaly needed any help with that. The woman was undeniably _other_. Even sitting down it was obvious that she had the height of an Asgardian, or maybe even something larger; she'd dwarf him in the suit, if she stood up.

She was dressed in furs which hung lank and uncared for, and Tony swallowed hard and took a moment to appreciate the fact that he didn't have to smell them. It was impossible to tell what colour her skin was supposed to be. Sickly blotches covered it so thickly that it could have been pale spatters across darker skin, or dark scarring covering lighter skin; he had no idea which. More disturbingly, both her skin and hair – the latter of which was brown-grey, dull and lifeless – was covered in the waxy sheen of a corpse. Her skin stretched over her bones so tightly that she almost matched the grinning skulls carved into the armrests of her high-backed chair.

Well, he'd meant to go to his death standing. He just hadn't realized that he'd already arrived.

"Hel," he said conversationally. Before he'd become an expert in wormhole physics, he wouldn't have recognized her – but, hey, that night had been long and disappointingly Pepper-less, and he'd done his homework thoroughly. Plus, the Norse myths? Were _insane_. The idea of meeting guys that wacko had been intriguing, right until it actually happened.

But during the brief, awkward conversation he'd gotten to have with Thor as they'd flown Loki to the helicarrier, the god of thunder had claimed that much of the myths were just that – and he'd stated specifically that Loki had no children, sounding confused at having to clarify this. And yet here was Hel. So either Thor had lied, or he hadn't known, _or_ there was something very weird going on.

(Granted, a lot of Norse mythology was pretty damn weird to begin with. The conversation with Thor had gone like this:

"So, what was with the, uh, eight-legged horse?"

"My father raised Sleipnir from a colt; he is the fastest beast in the Realms, capable of outpacing any of your Midgardian vehicles."

"Okay, but I mean – his mom?"

"Ah, she was a fine mare! Before she bore Sleipnir, the only horse that could outpace her was Svaldifari, the mighty stallion that bore my father in his youth."

"But she wasn't – okay, never mind, there's no good way to ask that question while we're standing in a tiny aircraft." And people said he had no tact.

"I am surprised your myths remember Sleipnir at all. From what I have read of them, they are much amiss, forgetting a great many truths and spinning falsehoods whole from the air."

"So, you're not an uncle?"

"Not to my knowledge." Thor had looked unnerved at this, but then, so had Loki – which was at least something; the psychotic bastard was wigged out by the thought of having kids. That was good, because the last thing they needed was a bunch of mini-Lokis running around.)

"You death has come to you, mortal," Hel pronounced, setting one hand down upon the armrest of her – throne? Yeah, Tony decided, that was definitely a throne, though it looked damned uncomfortable – shouldn't thrones have, oh, cushions, or something? This one could have been carved from stone, except how it probably wasn't.

When she put her hand down on it, though, the air rang as though something heavy had been dropped. The featureless space to Tony's left seemed to become even more featureless, until it resembled nothing so much as complete vacuum, and hey, yet another thing he hadn't known it was possible to _see_.

"Uh, not yet – I mean, wait a couple minutes, I'll be right along, but I'm still breathing right now so I figure – " It was harder to argue with her than it had been to mock Thor. Thor was a guy with a hammer and a fondness of lightning; Hel, according to the myths, could control the Níðhöggr, and the thought of that thing made him want to curl up into a little ball, clap his hands over his eyes, and scream until he couldn't hear anything. Then again, he was nothing if he couldn't persevere in the name of being annoying...

"Your actions in life have decided your doom," Hel said before he could really start working on that, her voice – although feminine – somehow deep enough to just drown him out. Tony didn't like being drowned out; with effort, he raised his hands to gesture a protest, but Hel ignored him. "You shall have oblivion. Go unto your reward, Midgardian, and be naught."

Well, that explained the void to his left.

He turned to face it fully. Everything he could see and hear told him that there was simply nothing there. Almost unconsciously, his hand rose, stretching out toward it – the need to handle, dismantle, and rebuild to _understand_ taking over. He snatched his hand back as soon as he realized what he was doing. That was of non-existence, and if he entered, then shortly, he, too, would be non-existent.

_Oblivion._

It was just as much of a temptation as it ever was. How often had he longed for just that? In the hour before dawn, when the rest of the world was asleep and he was too drunk, too tired, to be able to focus on his work – it called to him, then. The sweet lure of being able to close his eyes and _rest_, slip into a dreamless sleep, rather than nightmares of numbers and dark water. Before Afghanistan, it appealed as a way out of pointlessness, but after – after, when he had a tumbler of scotch in his hand and his brain was stubbornly calculating death tolls no matter what he threw himself at for distraction, sometimes he was just so. Damn. _Tired_.

_But_. But. He'd always had reasons to go on, before – lack of willpower, sheer inertia keeping him from taking that step; a new project to look forward to; the opposite of apathy, at times, sheer damn stubbornness, a refusal to give up and roll over like he was expected to do. And right now he had the best damn reason in the world, because Pepper was going to see _1 missed call_ and Jesus, he couldn't do that to her.

And hell (hah!), a goddess of death was ordering him to step forward and die. That seemed a damn good argument for living.

"Yeah, no," Tony decided, turning back to Hel. She regarded him with dull eyes. Did she even have any other expression? "Come on, riding a nuke up and saving a couple million people doesn't even net me a ticket to Valhalla? Or, hey, what's the other one, Fólkvang? Party with Freyja," he tossed out, mangling the pronunciation and waggling his eyebrows as he slowly turned in a circle to survey the rest of his surroundings. They were... very grey.

Oddly, despite his recollection of meeting the ground with considerable force, he was not standing in any sort of crater. The ground all around was flat, mostly grey rock with occasional loose bits covered in tufts of wilting, green-grey grass, which looked like _they_ would have been thankful for a chance at oblivion. The mist obscured his vision, preventing him from seeing any features other than Hel and her throne – unless there really was just _nothing else_ here, and if that were so Tony was going to have to pitch a fit, because he was standing on an alien world and _fuck_, it was _boring_.

He briefly took a moment to appreciate the fact that he was _standing on an alien world_. Then it became boring again.

"Do you really believe, son of Howard, that after all you have done, you are worthy of those feast halls?" Hel asked quietly.

Okay, that. That maybe hurt. A bit. But, really, if people were going to ask him damning questions, why did they always, _always_ manage to phrase it so as to hand him perfect openings? Seriously, she was as bad at this as the good captain.

"Yeah," he replied after a brief, incredulous pause, the length of which was perfectly timed to convey the maximum amount of, '_Duh._'

"And yet you came instead to my realm," Hel said dispassionately. "I do not choose my subjects, mortal. Your soul made its own way here."

"Not through the usual method," Tony retorted, wishing that he could fold his arms over his chest. Unfortunately the armour made that gesture awkward even when it was powered. "Why're you so keen for me to step into your existential acid bath?"

Was that an actual _expression_ on her face? Irritation – or, no, _amusement_? Tony let himself smirk triumphantly. Seriously, if he got the actual _queen of death_ to thaw out a bit, how cool would that be – not that he meant anything by it, because Pepper, _duh_,and he never meant anything by it these days, but people were a challenge just as much (so much more so) than any machine he'd ever laid eyes upon. Pepper knew him well; she just rolled his eyes when he started reflexively flirting. If she could see him now no doubt she'd be doing the same thing –

Well, no, she'd probably be tearing up, because he was dying, and Jesus, what the hell had he been thinking, to accept JARVIS's offer to call her? He was going to be _dead_ in a few minutes, his feelings wouldn't matter, but she'd be left staring at _1 missed call_ and how fucking selfish was he? His smirk faded away into a grimace.

"It is a favour, man of iron," Hel stated, causing his eyebrows to climb.

"What, for _me_? Uh, as romantic as Mark Chapman thought he was being, not the _best_ inspiration. I am actually in a deeply committed relationship with Pepper – and with living! Funny how that works out, and I don't think either of those two darling girls – "

"You requested it."

" –would take it well if I – what?"

He really wished that she had some sort of facial expression when she said that, vocal inflection, a_nything._ This was like talking to a stone, except worse; no, really, he had seen blocks of stone with more expression engraved on them. Case in point, her armrests.

"If I was going to toss myself into oblivion? I wouldn't need anybody's help with that," he snapped.

"You are a man who knows naught of souls, nor of how to destroy them – only how to damage them beyond repair. You requested a true ending, the peace that your afterlife is unlikely to grant you. Do you think that my counterpart there shall be so kind? You have not earned the favour of so many of us, o Merchant of Death."

Blood on his hands. So much goddamned blood. Norse gods and magic and aliens from across the universe – maybe from another universe, if he'd been understanding the full implications of 'the Nine Realms' properly – of course there was an afterlife, never mind what an atheist thought (hoped for. Prayed for). And just what _did_ he expect, when a goddess of death knew his name, knew his _title_, knew just how many lives he'd destroyed in his greed?

And, apparently, owed him a favour.

Tony met her gaze squarely. "If I've got room to be requesting doors, then I'm going to ask for one back to Earth instead."

Because when it came right down to it, he was never going to deserve oblivion. Oblivion was just another way of saying that he gave up – that he wasn't going to keep trying to fix his mess. Oblivion was irresponsible in all the ways he was no longer able to ignore.

"That was not the reward you asked for," Hel refused, and he barely – barely – managed to restrain himself long enough to let her continue. "You asked for oblivion. Peace... in return for your absence from the realms. You may go to your rest," she lifted one mottled arm and waved it at the nothingness, "and grant your world reprieve from all the mistakes that you will otherwise make. Consider this gravely, Anthony Edward Stark, as gravely as you did before, when you knew what your actions had wrought. Will you condemn Midgard to bear your inadequacies and misjudgement?"

The shrapnel finally ripping itself free couldn't have hurt any more than the flat, bald truth in her voice. It was only a lifetime of being in the public eye – of being aware that everything he did, ever, would be analyzed to death, then resurrected and flagellated into a pulp – that prevented him from falling to his knees.

Well. That and the excellent structural engineering of the armour, which kept him balanced upright even when it was unpowered and he wasn't paying attention.

Part of him wanted to – well, to step to his left. The rest of him analyzed, and came up with results. He narrowed his eyes as he examined them, coming to the inevitable conclusion. Because really, he'd done enough stupid shit, lost enough time to alcohol and engineering, that it was entirely possible he might have started talking to the air at one point and made such an asinine request. And maybe she thought that his work as the Merchant of Death was a favour to her. But back then – back then he hadn't _known_, in his gut and his heart, what he'd done. The death toll was easily ignored, shoved to the back of his brain, until he'd woken up, captive, had his head forced out of the mound of sand he'd buried it under, and into a barrel of water instead.

So he knew, now, in the same way he knew he'd never be able to repay what he owed – even if he saved every damn person on the face of the earth, he couldn't tally them up and say that was equal to lives lost; lives were more than goddamned _numbers_, they were none of them interchangeable – he knew that wasn't what Hel meant. And Thor had said that Loki had no children, anyway – but did that just mean, _yet_?

Huh. It looked like there was more to the whole 'based in the future' aspect of the Norse myths than anyone had thought. But if some future him had done Hel a favour, and asked for this in return – if some future Hel had thought that killing his previous self might fix the timeline – then that meant that the timeline wasn't fixed. Future knowledge could alter the present. He was not doomed to screw up and crash and burn, no matter what Hel might like to insinuate, and he was not going to fucking give up here, not now, when the Avengers had finally become a team, just in time to be Earth's only hope of repelling an alien invasion – and then _succeeded_ in that lofty goal. Not when his continued existence - now that he was starting to think there was some hope of that – might be the only thing between another nuke and Manhattan someday.

"I'll get back to you on that," Tony said, the flatness of his voice matching her own. He turned away from Hel, surveying the rest of the place once more, but it all looked depressingly the same. Well, he'd always had good results from picking directions at random. Occasionally he got fucking _horrific_ results, but on average they were positive.

Hel said nothing to stop him as he left. When he looked back after a few seconds later, the mists had swallowed her up – or she'd already left some other way, apparently taking her throne with her. He wished, yet again, that the suit was up and running, so that he could have had the sensors analyze how she'd pulled off that trick, or better yet, flown away himself. Walking in the suit was an effort; if he had to go very far at all, he'd have to stop and remove some parts of it. He had less than fifteen minutes of an onboard air supply remaining – the suit was designed to give him supplementary oxygen at high altitudes, _not_ for extended underwater trips, at least not without additional air supplies. Without the armour's sensors to tell him if the atmosphere was poisonous, removing the helmet was a rather extreme gamble.

It probably didn't matter. The exertion was making his heart rate increase, which should only kill him faster – but minutes passed without the tug of shrapnel in his heart, and finally, when he wasn't sure if he'd run out of O2 yet or not, he just flipped the faceplate up.

And promptly yelped in surprise.

Where a moment ago there had been nothing but more dullness, now there was _exceptionally concentrated_ dullness. Captain Rogers stood directly in front of him. If Tony's naked-sense was correct – and it always was – he was not wearing anything more than a flag. And it wasn't even an American flag!

"That's just unpatriotic," he babbled, trying not to let himself choke.

Rogers glanced down at himself. He was holding the flag – it looked like a flag, anyway; it was long, sheet-like, made of glossy material, and seemed to have one large blue star adorning it – rather carefully about his shoulders, and yeah, Tony _knew_ he was right about the naked-thing. Although he hadn't thought that Rogers would be such a prude about showing a little skin – and it wasn't like anyone was likely to object; Tony knew what the super soldier serum did to a body, and _day-um_. But seriously, the man had been a soldier and an experiment – even if he was an uptight ass, shouldn't he be used to walking around with his shirt off? It would drastically improve the scenery – although Rogers managed to do that even totally covered in the flag, by virtue of not being made of grey mist.

Unless he was actually made of grey mist, and Tony was just hallucinating him to add some colour. Although if that were the case he was pretty sure he would have hallucinated him with his shirt off, at least. Maybe wearing nothing at all. Although at that point, why wouldn't he be hallucinating Pepper, who was not only also gorgeous, but witty, funny, and not a total –

Tony's train of thought was abruptly derailed as Rogers shrugged, pulled the flag from off around his shoulders – wow, that was a _nice_ view – and then knotted it about his waist like a skirt, leaving his hands free, even though it showed a _whole_ lot more skin. He wondered if Rogers would be bothered by the cold. "I think I'd feel bad doing this to an American flag," Rogers replied easily.

"No one else would mind," Tony's mouth said before his brain could stop it. "You are totally not actually Captain America."

"What, because I'm wearing the wrong flag?" Not-Rogers sounded exasperated.

"No, because I didn't go flying through an alien wormhole with a nuke just so that you could end up dead only a couple of years later," Tony snapped. "What, you thought I wasn't even worth enough to crawl over, decided to get your own piece of wire to play with?" He was being selfish, he knew. Selfish and an ass and a complete liar, because he hadn't done it for Rogers, he'd done it for fucking _Manhattan_ – but maybe he'd entertained this fantasy in the back of his head that he'd saved the day, and the world would be safe, and every year the team would assemble on top of his 'big ugly building' (he could not _believe_ Rogers had called it that; wasn't the man supposed to be an artist? No appreciation for modern style, he supposed) and drink to his memory.

Of course it was a ridiculous idea, but that didn't mean that seeing his teammate dead – a few years older, yes, but in Helheim and wearing a flag instead of his spangly outfit, so definitely dead before his time – _again_. Of course, given Rogers' general propensity for throwing himself into danger, him living a long and full life had always been a pipe-dream, but even ridiculous dreams hurt when they died. Tony had a lot of experience with that.

"Usually I follow more of what you're saying, unless you're talking about science," Rogers was saying bemusedly while Tony took his hurt, balled it up, and tossed it over his metaphorical shoulder into the recesses of his mind. They were cavernous recesses. God knew they needed to be, with all the stuff he had stashed back there.

"Really? Because you sounded just a little bit too happy about those flying monkeys," Tony said. Okay. Maybe he hadn't managed to ball up _all_ the hurt. But he was done now, really, cross his heart and hope to die – oh, _wait_.

"Tony," Rogers held one hand up in a stalling gesture. "I'm not from your universe. I'm pretty sure I'm also not dead," he added, more thoughtfully.

Seriously, Tony sort of wished Pepper were here to see this – she was the one who appreciated art, after all, and really Rogers could have been something from a Greek statue, half-clothed and with rock-hard abs. Having Pepper as a girlfriend had, even more so than becoming a suited superhero, convinced Tony to spend a good two hours in the gym every day, even when JARVIS had to shut off his work to get his attention. Pepper had a _thing_ about abs, and really, she was gorgeous, she really was, and he knew she put a tonne of work into her appearance so he sort of felt he owed it to her to do the same. (And if him being in good physical condition reassured her somewhat, when he took such crazy risks – well. It was worth it. She was always worth it.)

The vast majority of his brain was not stuck on ogling Rogers' hunky, hunky body. Really, he'd never needed a majority of his brain for that. He could design (had designed) rocket engines while having sex, and it hadn't even been bad sex – it had been pretty good sex, in fact, inspiringly good, and the patents had made the board happy with him for entire _months_. But the point was that simply _appreciating_ something was never going to take up more than a fraction of his brainpower. He had a mind that was meant to break down and build, not stand around looking and saying, 'Oh, that's nice.'

So while his eyes appreciated the fact that he had a living work of art standing in front of him, his brain subdivided further. Part of him relaxed as Rogers pronounced himself not dead. The bulk of him began strolling through every paper he'd ever read on multiple universes – but so much of that was pie-in-the-sky stuff, old work that had been overthrown by experimental verification of the Foster Theory's solution for FTL travel (even if the authors didn't yet know it – but that's what Foster got for working with SHIELD).

"So you're older, in your dimension," his mouth carried on, never needing (or heeding) the full direction of his brain even at the best of times.

Skirt-Rogers – because he couldn't call him Flag-Rogers, not when Rogers-Rogers already wore stars-and-stripes, if not exactly in the same proportions as an actual flag – frowned at him. It was an interesting frown. Tony might not have had the HUD in front of him, but he'd always had an eye for angles; he could analyze facial expressions in minute detail, even if he sort of failed at_understanding_ them every time it ever really mattered. Well, thanks to Pepper it was usually only maybe half the time, now. But when it didn't matter, he could step back, think, _Eyebrow lowered by 0.7 centimeters, head tilted forward by three degrees, mouth curving on a radius of –_ and _yes_, he used metric; it really was the superior system. SI had used imperial for years, but these days they were all metric, all the way, baby – too many international contracts causing too much confusion in-house otherwise.

The expression on Skirt-Rogers' face was – it was softer than the way that Rogers had frowned at him before, back on the Helicarrier, even later, when they'd stood in the room where Phil had died. It was – _kinder_, Tony hesitated to think. Mostly, though, it was reminiscent of Pepper, or Rhodey, and the way they looked when –

"You're younger, in my dimension," Skirt-Rogers interrupted his train of thought, _again_.

Tony threw up his hands – or, well, it was more of a sort of slow crawl to put them up, because even after he'd expended all of the non-free-energy weapons he stored in the arms of the armour, they were still proportionally much heavier than the leg components. "That's just not fair," he complained. Because really – Rogers gained a few years and he looked like he'd just passed thirty, whereas Tony was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had more than a few grey hairs, now. He could only hope that he escaped the horrors of male pattern baldness, because if he lost all of his hair on top, he'd have to shave the entire thing or lose what precious little dignity he had left (JARVIS and Pepper would say none), and then he'd look like Obidiah, and then he really would have to kill himself.

"No, it's a – a good look on you," Rogers said, and Tony was about to cross his arms and huff, _"Thanks,"_ but then he continued, "You look – you know. Settled. Stable." That was – _wistful_.

"Stable – " Tony narrowed his eyes. "Christ, Rogers, what did your version of me _do_ – oh, hell, I killed you, didn't I? Or got you killed, at the very least, I think if I'd gone so far as to actually kill you, you wouldn't still be just standing there in your skirt – "

"What – no, Tony, it wasn't – you didn't – " But there was a peculiar mix of anger, sadness, and guilt on his face that told Tony all he needed to know.

"I got you killed!" he exclaimed, gesturing emphatically, if slowly. (One might argue that the slowness added an air of majesty – but only if Tony concentrated on blocking out the added air of_impotence_, because that was never a word he wanted to be associated with, thank you, no.) "I got you killed – and we were friends! You called me 'Tony', instead of Stark," he accused, "Don't give me that about not being dead, you're wearing a goddamned flag and it's not an American flag – "

"Tony," Skirt-Rogers had stepped forward and placed his hands on Tony's upper arms, stilling his attempts at grandiose flailing. "It really doesn't matter."

There was something about the way Rogers said his name – something _almost_ like how Pepper said it – that caused him to still, and meet Rogers' gaze. It was... unsettlingly piercing, Tony decided. Regular-Rogers was too out of depth to be able cut glass with his eyes (_don't think about what he said in the lab_) but this man was clearly at home in his skin, even standing in Helheim wearing nothing but a un-American flag.

Then Rogers' lips quirked, and he ruined it by adding, "You're shorter than him, too," and Tony smacked his hands away with a huff.

In the armour like this, with Rogers barefoot, they were eye-to-eye; that was just cruel, really, the universe was just taunting him, to create a reality where he didn't have to wear goddamned lifts _all the time_ just to be on eye-level with Pepper and pretty much every other industry leader out there because they were all _taller_ than him. It was not his fault. Both Howard and Maria had been taller than average – it wasn't _fair_, damn it.

(The fact that Bruce was _even shorter_ was, Tony could admit – if only to himself – part of the reason he'd immediately taken a liking to the good doctor. Aside from his brilliance and the whole rage monster thing – well, first impressions did make a difference.)

"So. Why the unusually coloured toga?" Tony asked, definitely not just to change the subject, not at all.

Rogers shrugged, looking down at it uncomfortably. "It's the only thing that sticks with me," he explained, looking a bit lost. "I keep – slipping in and out..."

"Slipping how?" Tony asked, continuing on forward into the grey mist. Now, at least, he had a travelling partner – and they would have this discussion while walking. After a moment's hesitation, Rogers followed him. If the ground beneath his feet bothered him at all, he gave no indication – but then, he'd run around New York (1940s New York, but still – _New York_) barefoot and lived to debrief afterward, so he probably thought that hard-packed dirt and a few dismal clumps of grass were as soft as mink carpets.

"Through time, I think," Rogers said, thoughtful. "I see things, but – I haven't been able to affect anything, so far. You're the first person able to see me, the first person I've been able to touch at _all_, without my hand going straight through them." He reached out again to lay a hand on the armour.

Tony irritably batted him away again. Not that he didn't usually appreciate getting felt up – armoured or otherwise – by gorgeous half-naked blonds, but Rogers was – _different_ (_the sort to throw himself on the grenade_ – _it wasn't fair, Tony had_ draped _himself across that damn wire_ – ). He did feel, maybe – just a bit, a _teeny_ bit – guilty, when he saw the way Rogers' face twitched as he brushed him off.

"Through time and through realities, apparently," Tony corrected him, because really, that was the more interesting bit in this mess, whether it was him or Rogers that had gone skipping across the universe. Or, Tony considered, perhaps it was something about this _place_. If Hel could be done a favour by a future him, and consider annihilating his present self to _not_ be an enormous temporal fuck-up... what if it was just that this world, wherever – no, 'wherever' was meaningless; _whatever_ was more to the point – it was... what if it just worked differently?

Rogers was watching him, Tony noticed out of the corner of his eye – because he was _not_ watching Rogers, damn it, it didn't matter. Pick an infinite number of possible other universes, of course there would be some where he was even more of an asshole and Rogers had died. It didn't _matter_.

Except that the expression on Rogers' face was... fond.

"So how did _you_ get here, then?" Rogers asked after a few more minutes of walking in semi-awkward silence.

"Drove a nuke through an alien portal."

"Ah." Infuriatingly, Rogers didn't seem at all surprised by this – if anything, he was _resigned_. "So being older doesn't mean you've stopped pulling really stupid stunts, I guess."

"Hey! It was aimed at Manhattan!" Tony objected.

Rogers stopped, and turned to face him with a frown. "So there was no other way than to go through the portal with it?" he demanded. "You couldn't let go of the nuke right before it went through? Or get the Hulk or Thor to play darts with it instead? What about letting Bob deal with it – that's the type of thing the Sentry does best!"

Clearly, there were _some_ differences between their universes. Tony filed away the latter sentences to be examined at a later time. Not understanding a reference made by Steve Rogers: what a turn-about. "I had to be sure," he snapped. You couldn't _toss_ a guided missile through a portal, it was still _guided_. Idiot. Rogers was an idiot. "You want to gamble with the lives of a couple million innocent people just so I might come home safe?"

"I want you to be as smart as you are when you're building stuff, and come up with a solution that doesn't rely on you thinking you're _expendable_. Different universe, same old Tony," Rogers said bitterly. "Always so willing to throw yourself in front of a bullet that you never notice that sometimes there's nobody standing behind you."

It was the exact opposite of what another Rogers – younger, but with those same clear azure eyes, angry and piercing, able to cut right through his defences – had said mere hours ago. Here and now, Tony stared at a man from another reality, quietly floored.

Rogers' gaze softened. "Sorry," he muttered, turning away. "You didn't deserve that."

"No, it's..." Tony cleared his throat, "...fine."

The other man turned back to him, concerned – then cocked his head to one side, swivelled about and came alert. "Do you hear that?"

Tony listened, but with the armour's sensor suite down, his hearing was even worse than normal – and it hadn't been great for years. Too many long hours pulled in the workshop listening to music at a volume that most people would call ungodly had done his ears no favours. He was lucky to be able to hear enough to carry on conversations; it wouldn't have been possible if he'd been wearing the Mark VI, which, when unpowered, was basically a fancy coffin, sealed off from sight, sound, and mobility.

"Sounds like a horse," Rogers declared, striding forward into the mist determinedly. He stopped after a few paces, looking chagrined as Tony slogged after him, fighting the suit every step of the way. "Sorry."

"You can stop apologizing for everything, Rogers," Tony said. He tried to make it into a grumble, but it came out half-hearted.

"And you can call me Steve, you know," the other man rejoined mildly. Tony glanced at him, eyebrows raised exaggeratedly high, but Rogers – _Steve_, then, fine; he was nicer than the Rogers back home anyway – was peering off into the fog, no doubt looking for the source of the sound, still. Tony fumbled at the release catch at the back of his neck, his gauntlet-encased fingers feeling awkward and clumsy, before he found it and managed to pull off the helmet.

Huh. That was definitely a horse – or somebody with a pair of coconuts. Tony only actually had a frame of reference for the latter. And there was something else, over and above the sound, like – a creaky wheel?

They walked along – well, Steve strode; Tony clomped – for perhaps a half-minute more, before finally Tony spotted a darker-shaped section of fog. Steve had tensed a few seconds earlier, his enhanced eyes obviously picking out the shape before Tony's could – and then, well, he'd been a bit distracted by the way Steve's muscles rippled when he went on alert, which might have delayed him a bit more in spotting the new arrival. Sure enough, a few moments later the fog between them thinned, and Tony was able to see that it was indeed a horse, plodding along quite sullenly, despite or perhaps because of the finery bedecking it. It was pulling behind it a cart that was equally decked out in bling, built of finely painted wood, gilded with silver, and hung with furs that would have, on Earth, required a small fortune to buy and a larger fortune to fight lawsuits from PETA.

A woman stood upright in it, wearing more pelts – though thankfully, because Tony still had his helmet off, these were in better condition than Hel's had been – and carrying a spear that looked about as impractical as Loki's sceptre – so that meant that it could probably shoot lightning or turn people into frogs (or both). Tony whistled appreciatively. Her long, red hair was even brighter than Pepper's, although Pepper would never have allowed her hair to get into such a tangled state. The colour was made all the more prominent by paleness of her skin; she could have been carved from ivory. On her head she wore a crown that had to weigh at least twenty pounds, judging from the sheer amount of gold and jewels stuck onto the thing. On a lesser woman, it would have looked ridiculous (scratch that: a lesser woman would have ended up with a broken neck), but on a two-metre tall Asgardian, or whatever this woman was, it looked like a crown fit for a queen. She certainly carried herself like one: head held high, unbowed by the weight of the crown, her chin up and her shoulders thrown back (a posture which, Tony noted with appreciation, highlighted the fact that she had a truly impressive rack), as if she was one step away from proclaiming the long list of her many valorous deeds in full verse. Possibly with a minstrel accompanying her on a lute.

The horse came to a stop, apparently of its own accord, when the cart was about two metres from them. "Ma'am," Steve said. Tony was willing to bet he hadn't once let his eyes stray below her neckline, except for general threat assessment. Honestly, sometimes Tony could believe that Rogers – or at least certain parts of him – was _still_ an icicle. Tony frowned. Had anyone actually checked? Surely, if he'd gotten frostbite, it would have affected his fingers and toes first, but on the other hand the tissues around the groin _were_ more delicate than –

"The living are rare in this realm, but I think your kind is more rare still," the woman announced. "I recognize neither your features nor your apparel; tell me, whence come you?"

'_Whence come you?_' And he'd thought _Thor_ talked like a Shakespearean production gone awry. He was still mouthing the words when Steve answered, "We're from Midgard – er, not from the same one. May I have the favour of knowing who asks, my lady?"

Tony spent about a quarter-second boggling at him, and then shrugged in resignation. Of _course_ Steve would be perfectly fine with addressing a woman as 'my lady'. It apparently didn't please the lady in question, who lifted her chin a fraction higher, and answered, "I am Brynhildr, daughter of Budli, and a shieldmaiden; no lady am I, for he who would have been my husband was faithless, enchanted by the foul wiles of a witch's daughter. Now I journey to meet him, for in Hel's realm, freed of the burden of suffering that is the lot of the living, we shall never again be parted."

"Um," Steve managed, after this declaration had hung in the air for about ten seconds. Tony was rather enjoying the flabbergasted look Steve was currently sporting – and maybe that was unfair, because god knew _Rogers_ was probably flabbergasted all the damn time, but since he mostly seemed to ignore it in favour of obliging the stick up his ass, Tony still felt somewhat justified in finally getting to that look on another Captain America.

When further words seemed to still elude the good Captain, Tony took pity on him and decided to try the direct approach. "Well, I'm sure you and he will be very happy here, then!" he said brightly. "I don't suppose you could point us in the direction you came from, lend us a hand in getting out of here?"

Brynhildr didn't frown at him – that would have required wrinkling her flawlessly alabaster skin (seriously, Tony was beginning to get a bit creeped out by her pallor; skin wasn't supposed to be that colour except on a corpse, and while apparently she technically _was_ a corpse, given that she was currently talking to them that didn't help with the creep factor _at all_). Instead, her eyes managed to become a shade colder than they had been before, which was, wow, that was an accomplishment, all kudos to her, seriously, because they'd been pretty glacial to start with. Forget chilling a cooler full of beer with the iciness of her gaze; a mere glance could have kept his house in Malibu cool for a year.

"The dead may only enter this realm by Gjallarbrú, the golden bridge that spans the river of knives, the most deathly cold of the eleven rivers that spring forth from the Élivágar. But you, being of the living as obviously as the colour in your cheeks, are not bound to only depart by that road; and if you know it not, then t'was not your entrance and so shall not be the method of your departure. That path leads only to one realm, and I know that realm: it is not the origin of creatures so strange as you." She lifted one pale hand to gesture in their direction.

"Thank you, ma'am," Steve said politely, and he stepped to one side. Then all of them stared at each other for another few seconds, until Steve stepped back, grabbed Tony's arm, and hauled him to the side as well, whereupon Brynhildr, satisfied that they were out of her way – apparently going around them was beneath her dignity, or something – gave a regal, if displeased nod, and the horse started forward, again without apparent instruction. Tony spared a moment to feel sorry for her husband, even if he had brought it down on his own head. That was _not_ a happy woman.

"River of knives, great," he grimaced after a moment. "What do you want to bet that's as literal as the rest of the myths have been so far?"

"Oh, I don't know," Steve mused as they began walking again. Tony had the vague feeling that Steve was probably doing something like following the wagon tracks – but while maybe Tony could have picked up on them if he'd had the armour's sensor suites available, Boone he was not. And Steve had enhanced eyesight, anyway; it was hardly a fair contest. "She called the ruler of this place Hel? I guess this universe's counterpart of Hela is a man..."

"Uh, no?" Tony said, raising an eyebrow. "Hel's definitely a woman, just like the myths, trust me – though not one I'd want to get up close and personal with." He shuddered. The whole looking-like-a-corpse thing was creepy enough on its own, and the shadowy thought of the Níðhöggr – not to mention the possible temporal problems of this whole... place. It might not have been his future self that Hel had been referring to – maybe it was his counterpart from another universe, where he was older. Except that he didn't think Hel was the type of lady to be confused by a twin from another universe.

"Huh," Steve replied. "This match up closely with the myths from yours, then?" He gestured at their foggy surroundings.

"I guess?"

"I've heard of the Gjallerbrú before," Steve said. "That's the same in my universe."

Tony shrugged, as much as he could, trapped inside the armour. It really was quite awkward. He could stop, take it off now that he knew he didn't need the air supply, but then he'd be left this place without any protection at all. And it might very well come in handy if he needed to build, oh, _anything_; the small onboard toolkit wouldn't help with any of the power issues, but it'd let him strip components. There would still be the question of power – but this was a place with aliens advanced enough to build interstellar portals...

"I should be dead," he said abruptly, because he should have been by now.

Steve was about a quarter-step ahead of him, so Tony got a good look as his shoulders tensed. "No, you shouldn't," he said quietly. Tony watched in fascination as the tension rippled down the muscles in his back. Once he got back, he was going to have to redesign Rogers' uniform to be more skin-tight, because _damn,_ the man had a lot to show off.

Once he got back. Which, since he totally should have been dead by now, was looking increasingly likely. This might be a different universe, but that didn't mean he was _trapped_ here. He was Tony fucking Stark, and he had just decided he was going to get home, and hug Pepper, and then have one of those Epic Kisses just like William Goldman had gone about, and then do that _thing_ Pepper had mentioned (which Goldman had certainly not gone on about, thank god, that was a kid's book) so good fucking luck to whatever decided to get in his way.

"Well, apparently not," Tony agreed cheerfully. "I just don't know _why_ I shouldn't be dead. I've got a chest full of shrapnel and no active magnetic field to keep it from ripping my heart to shreds, rather more literally than some of my past dates have done – well, that was mostly robotics, though when they stopped funding the Desertron I cried, I admit – I tried to fund it myself but there were concerns that if I got involved the black holes would be of a troublesomely large size." That had come from Obie (why couldn't he stop referring to him with the nick name, even years later, _damnit_, he'd meant Stane) who had been more concerned about the financial black hole of such a project, and had thrown distractions at Tony hard and fast until the SSC had been forgotten.

Steve, apparently, also didn't approve of the Desertron, or Tony rambling on about it; before Tony's last sentence was done he'd grabbed Tony by the shoulders again – seriously, what was _with_that? – and begun inspecting his face frantically, having first glanced at the armour and then apparently given it up as beyond understanding (though it had taken him a second longer than Tony would have predicted Rogers to take – although, if this Steve was older, and knew Tony well, then it was probably that he'd been out of the ice for _years_, more than enough to become comfortable with modern technology, and the Iron Man technology in particular, if they actually... got along, which considering that _that_ Tony had probably not-quite-killed him, maybe not). "Why didn't you say something before?" Steve demanded. He had a look that said that if he hadn't been a well-trained soldier, he'd have been shaking Tony – but, right, bad idea to shake somebody you thought was dying, even if though Tony had just declared the opposite, _hello_.

"Well, unless you were hiding Mjolnir under that flag – fair dues to you, you might be – or some other power source capable of generating an output equal to or greater than that of the average car battery – not one of those tiny Smartcars – "

"So you need a power source. You've got your entire armour with you, you must be able to rig something up – or we can... find..." Steve looked around, his brow furrowing with frustration.

"Steve," Tony said patiently, waiting until Steve met his eyes again before continuing. "If I needed a power source to continue living, I'd already be dead. So either I am dead – and you are too, in which case hi, denial – or I'm not, but in either case, no power source needed, stop getting your flag in a wad." He waited until Steve opened his mouth to protest against the 'we're dead' part before adding, "And if we're both dead I'm going to sue whoever designed this afterlife, because seriously, this is fucking boring."

Steve's mouth closed, and his lips twitched.

Awesome. Steve-lecture averted. Tony started plodding forward again, pulling himself from Steve's grip. "I just don't know _why_ I'm not dead. The arc reactor failing should have done it by now."

Steve made a thoughtful noise. "This is... the realm of the dead. Brynhildr said that the dead could only enter by the Gjallerbrú."

"...and?"

"So," Steve thrust one hand out to indicate their surroundings, and Tony was a bit disappointed that the light was so mild and constant, because he would have loved to see a gleam run across those muscles, "if you died here, then you wouldn't be entering that way."

Tony stared at him. He closed his eyes and sighed, silently. "Steve, that makes zero sense," he managed to say after another moment, with what felt like commendable patience.

Steve shrugged. "Different realms work differently."

"That's not – physics doesn't work like that! I mean, yes, you could have a stipulation that says that biological lifeforms that fall within certain parameters are all affected by crossing over the bridge in numerous ways, but by implying that the parameters are exclusive instead of inclusive you're assigning it _sentience_ – "

"It could be sentient," Steve pointed out. "Maybe Hel is keeping you alive."

"Doubt it," Tony muttered, momentarily derailed. "She didn't seem too happy that I wasn't about to throw in the towel."

"What did she – " Oh god, Steve sounded _protective_, derail, derail!

"I pissed her off, she told me to go away," Tony lied quickly. Thinking about her corpse-like skin brought to mind that impossible curve, coiling out from behind Yggdrasil's root; he barreled onwards. "That's not the point! The point is your suggestion is terrible!"

"It could be magic," Steve suggested, and Tony stopped dead this time as he struggled to make his mouth work. He nearly dropped his helmet.

"Did you – did you _actually_ just suggest that it was – " Steve grabbed one of his arms and started them moving forward again while Tony struggled to convey his deep unhappiness with this most recent statement. "I mean. Come on. _Magic._ You are not actually, _seriously_, putting that out there – "

"My usual version of you hates magic, too."

"What? No! No, no, I would say something about age and wisdom and all that crap, but you know what, no, I was not that much of an idiot at any age, has your me taken brain damage or something? Too many fights? Magic is science not understood, and if you're going back to applied science, you're going back to sentience – "

"Yeah, my Tony got over that about the first time Loki blasted him with magic," Steve said cheerfully.

" – Loki does not do _fucking magic!_" Tony exclaimed, and if it were closer to a shriek than a declaration, then he thought he could be excused, because this sort of idiocy was the worst and here he was stuck with only Steve – no, goddamnit, _Rogers_ – for company, blathering on about things that they couldn't understand. Because that was the whole thing about magic: magic meant mystical bullshit, the stuff people obscured because they didn't want to look at it too closely. Magic meant giving up, calling it a day, and agreeing that it was just all too complex for your poor little human brain, and he was _Tony fucking Stark_, there was never going to be a single damn thing he couldn't take apart and put back together twice as good. Saying something was _magic_ was just insulting.

"He has a fucking staff which is clearly some form of energy weapon, and I don't know how the Chitauri speeders work or how their whales fly, but then nobody else on earth knows how the repulsors seem to let me violate conservation of momentum, which, big clue, they _don't_, they get around it, I don't fucking break the laws of physics, if I break the laws of physics then it means whoever made up the law was wrong, we rewrite them, we don't _break_ them, they're _how things work_ – " Steve was actually _laughing_ at him, and it just made Tony angrier, " – calling it magic is a cop out! Clarke's Law, advanced beyond our understanding, Loki is not a fucking _magician_, he's a scientist from an alien culture – "

"And this? Tony, we're standing in the realm of the dead!" Steve threw his arms out wide; he didn't seem to care that they'd both stopped walking, anymore, but at least he'd stopped laughing.

"_Their_ dead, not mine!" Tony snapped back.

"And maybe their laws are different, and maybe there's more chaos in them, and maybe we call it magic!"

Tony buried his face in his hands – which, ow, he had to remember he was wearing the gauntlets, he'd just smacked himself in the face with a double palmful of metal. "Just – stop," he begged. "God, it's like listening to Palin talk about Russia."

"Fine," Steve said, sounding exasperated. "Fine. But Tony, if you're – if you're dying, we need to figure it out. Neither of our homes is on the other side of the Gjallerbrú, but if being on _this_ side is what is keeping you alive, we're going to have a big problem as soon as we cross."

Tony breathed out through his nose, slowly, and tried to remember what Pepper had said once: _Just because someone is an idiot about something doesn't mean they're an idiot about everything – oh my God, Tony, if your intelligence were limited by your knowledge about art, you'd be getting fed through a tube._ It was okay, Steve could be an idiot and he could still be the only other person here, and Tony didn't need to pick a fight with him, he could –

Jesus, he wanted to go home, bury his face in Pepper's hair and just hold on.

"Right. Okay. Fine!" he said, perhaps a shade too cheerfully, if the sudden uncertainty that crossed Steve's face with any indication. Well, watch him care. "Well, you know the saying, cross that bridge when we come to it – a bit more literally in this case than in most, I admit, but first we have to find the thing, so lead on, MacDuff." There was no way he would be able to follow whatever trail Steve had picked up on his own.

They walked for a while in silence. Tony had no idea how long it actually was; he could reel back the exact number of steps he'd taken, his capacity for numbers helpfully keeping track of that, but walking in the armour threw off all his estimations for speed. The mist and the lack of anything else to look at had him studying Steve's musculature for a while, but that was either going to get boring fast or make walking very uncomfortable. And he had to admit, the first was never an option, because Steve was a work of art: forget Newman and Potluck, any toddler could do abstract expressionism. Steve was – well. He was the paragon of the American dream, and although Tony had never been one to dream big, that was usually because he tended to turn ideas into reality before they could linger in his subconscious long enough to start working their way into his dreams.

"So, uh," Tony said instead when the twinges of discomfort began to get a bit bigger than just _twinges_ – haha, so to speak. "Who's Bob? I don't think we have a Bob in my universe. Well, we have _Bobs_, but not the one you meant."

"Bob Reynolds? The Sentry?" Steve suggested, looking thoughtful when Tony shook his head. "He might be forgotten where you come from – uh, he was a comic book character, but then... it's a bit complicated." He backpedaled under Tony's disbelieving stare. "Weirder things happen to us all the time."

Tony snorted. "Maybe in your universe. Weirdest thing to happen in mine was when Hammer managed to recruit somebody with actual talent."

"What other superheroes do you have, then, besides the Avengers?"

"Besides the Avengers?" Tony raised an eyebrow. "Are superheroes supposed to be a dime a dozen? Doesn't commonality rather diminish the, uh, superness of the job?"

"You don't have any others?" Steve squinted at the ground a bit; Tony couldn't tell if he was having problems reading tracks, or comprehending what Tony had just said. "Huh. Maybe that explains your problem with magic."

Tony sighed, but remembered not to facepalm in time to avoid worsening his headache.

"Sorry," Steve said hastily. "Just – I guess our universes are a bit more different than I thought."

_Breathe deep._ Tony squeezed his eyes shut, and managed to keep himself to a strained, "They can't be _that_ different."

They went back to silence, again, after that, mind-numbing dullness that was _boringboringboring_, but Tony thought that he might crawl out of his skin (without even crawling out of the armor, first) if he had to listen to Steve go on about _magic_, again. It was bad enough that they were up against aliens with access to things like wormhole technology and mind-control; no need to compound it with voluntary stupidity. And honestly, he found himself rather disappointed with Steve. Sure, he knew that Rogers, back in his world, was religious, which was - well, hardly something that Tony could get behind – but he hadn't thought him so dense as to think mysticism could be practical, stick up the ass or not.

After a while – which might have been more like five minutes – Tony was on the verge of asking another question just to break the monotony of the surroundings. The drab greyness seemed to press in on him, constantly reminding him that without Steve, he was completely, utterly lost – and even _with_ Steve, he was lost. The silence was enough to start driving him insane; his fingers itched for his tablet, his modelling programs, something to _do_. But the only thing to do around here was to walk and listen to Steve.

Thankfully, before he could give in and ask something that might lead to yet more discussion of David Copperfield's relevance, Steve cocked his head to the side, and said, "Huh."

"Huh?"

"Water," he explained, turning slowly back and forth before settling on a direction just a few degrees shy of the one they were heading in. "That way."

Tony swore. He'd been hoping the Gjallerbrú would be fairly close by, but if Steve was just barely hearing water now, then unless their surroundings suddenly got a lot more sound-dampening – or unless the Gjöll was a lot punier than the legends made it – to be fair, 'creek of knives' didn't have quite the same ring to it – then it was still a long way away. Tony was tired and sore, not to mention sweltering in the suit... but taking it off still didn't seem like a good idea either.

He kept up a grumbled commentary of invectives for the next few minutes, drudging up cursewords from languages he spoke fluently, spoke brokenly, and didn't speak at all beyond those particular words used to express his ire. After the first minute that Tony managed to keep swearing without repetition, Steve began to look amused. After the second, he started looking admiring, but by the third, his expression had taken on shades of alarm. By the end of the fifth, he'd circled back to amusement, and at this point Tony could admit to himself that he was mostly just continuing to see what Steve would look like in another few minutes. Okay, so admiration for his filthy vocabulary was not exactly a declaration of his awesomeness, but he would take what he could get, especially when it meant he got to break the monotonously dull landscape that –

One step further, and the mist thinned. Two more, and it vanished. Tony twisted around and stared backward; the mist loomed like a tangible wall, and Tony shuddered. Despite knowing full well that a great many deadly gasses were completely colourless, that he was just as likely to be breathing something toxic _now_ as he had been three steps ago, there was something about the gloomy weight of it that made him want to hack up his lungs until all trace of the mist was cleared from his system.

Out of the mist, the noise of the Gjöll was deafening – so, sound-dampening: check. Tony turned forward again, in time to see Steve walking closer to the edge. The featureless ground had grown rocky and jagged, just as suddenly as the mists had lessened – lessened, but not entirely ended, Tony realized. As he looked into the distance, over the cliff edge a few meters away, and across the great stretch of foaming water that was the Gjallerbrú, everything gradually faded into grey-white again.

He clomped forward to join Steve in looking over the edge. It was a mild overhang, at about a five degree angle, with enough jagged protrusions of rock that a serious climber would have had no difficulty scaling it, but it was enough to give Tony a dizzying sense of vertigo – or maybe that was just his day catching up with him. It wasn't as if he had any problem with heights, after all. Perhaps it was the waters below; they foamed with rapids, but also he caught flashes of light, like off of metal, and had to swallow as he remembered its name.

River of Knives – _Jesus_. Maybe he'd better reconsider Steve's sentience idea.

"Come on," Steve said, after they'd spent a while staring over the side – Tony out of sheer cursed determination, because he wasn't going to let any height beat him; start with that and the next thing he knew he'd be unable to take running leaps out of airplanes, and _then_ where would he be? But he couldn't ignore the faint sense of relief that curled in his stomach when he stepped back from the edge.

Their objective, the Gjallerbrú, was easy to find. Whichever bard had described it as having a roof of gold had been spot on. Despite there being no apparent sun – the sky was simply grey, so Tony might have been able to blame it on clouds, if any clouds had ever looked so uniformly blank as that – it gleamed brightly, a straight span that extended out into nothingness, seemingly without support. There were no pillars beneath, no suspension cables: it was just a beam. It didn't even have the good grace to curve. Something in Tony felt vaguely offended at that. The rest of him just wanted to know how. If it was a material – or something else, invisible, like the force nets he'd sketched out for adding to the Tower roof, but hadn't gotten around to implementing –

Near where the bridge met the cliff, there were a few low, squat buildings, made of what looked like the same nondescript grey stone as the ground. Two splotches of colour stood out against the grey: one large splash of green, standing directly in front of the bridge, and a smaller dark red blob that bobbed about one of the buildings – which, Tony realized as they got closer, weren't so much squat as they simply gave off that impression, perhaps due to the size of the woman standing in front of the bridge. She topped three metres, easily, her green sleeveless dress showing off cords of muscle that were the equal of Steve's – but just like Hel and Brynhildr, her skin was corpse-white and waxy.

"Not often do the living come by this way," she called out as they neared. Her voice was stern and echoing, with all the weight of the river behind her. "And you are very far from home, mortals."

"Do you know where that home is?" Steve asked eagerly.

"Aye, for it is the task of all those who watch the bridges to know the origin of all travellers, even those who do not possess sight to equal Heimdallr's. I am Móðguðr, guardian of the Gjallerbrú, the bridge over the river that flows past the base of Yggdrasil's third root – and you are of Midgard, which sits at the base of the second."

"Great, so... how do we get there?" Tony interrupted, before she could tell them something particularly creepy, like how she liked to watch carts full of dead people pass by, or something. Or maybe the over-sharing had just been Brynhildr's thing.

Móðguðr considered this, folding her arms across her ample bosom. "The bifrost bridge connects all places within these Nine Realms, but methinks you come from a different set. How you might get back would depend on how you came. Should it be sorcery you seek, then you are advised to look to Asgard, for despite the enduring stupidity of the Aesir, they nonetheless breed the greatest of magicians; should it be craft that brought you here, then you would do well to cross this bridge, for Svartálfaheimr lies soon beyond it, and the Dvergar are the cleverest at such things."

"I'm not really sure how I got here," Steve said.

"Then you would do well to look to both. You, at least, have the look of the Dvergar's craft about you," she said to Tony.

"Yeah, I don't – I just... fell," he said, barely managing not to trip over the words. Sorcery and magicians, god_damn_it. Was that actually just what they called their version of science, or was the mysticism the key to it? No, it couldn't – he couldn't believe he'd actually just let himself think that, shit, he was the person who swept up other people in his wake and drove them insane, but this nuthouse was getting even to him. He wanted to go home.

The giantess looked taken aback. "Then your only way home may simply be to fall again; but I have no knowledge of how you might set upon the right realms, instead of falling past the roots forever. Nor would such an attempt be wise, for the things that dwell within the Ginnungagap are not a sight for sane minds."

"Yeah, I... got that," Tony sighed. "Dwarves it is, then."

"If the Dvergar cannot or will not help you – for they will demand payment – " Móðguðr warned, "then look to Heimdallr, for he is the greatest of watchers, and has seen even into the Ginnungagap; if his Observatory cannot locate your home, then nothing can."

"Thank you, ma'am," Steve said sincerely. "You've been the most help we've gotten in all this."

Móðguðr smiled. "The bridge sings to me of those whose passage shall make it ring with thunder," she said, and _okay_, that right there was just as creepy as Brynhildr's entire spiel. Tony was starting to get really sick of aliens. "The price of passage is your name and purpose; without, I cannot let you pass, and with, I cannot bar you."

"Steve Rogers, and I'm looking to go home," Steve said instantly, far too trustingly, because wasn't there something in every myth and legend about not giving out your name? That part at least wasn't entirely crap; the brain responded instinctively to the name it claimed as its own.

But the giantess was turning towards him, and, well, the suit was dead and he was not looking to disprove Steve's theory of 'a wizard did it' by getting squashed by a statuesque Amazon, really, he wasn't. Tony sighed. "Tony Stark – also looking to go home."

Móðguðr stepped to one side peacefully, and gestured for them to pass onto the bridge. Steve gave her a respectful head bob as he did so, while Tony more gingerly tested whether the span would hold up – and there had to be forcefields holding it up, because even buckytubes, even _diamond_ would have arced under the weight over that distance; it was impossibly long. He wondered what they did for an energy source. Alien energy, he could make an absolute fortune – more of one – get even further ahead of the game, figure out something that would be Loki's stupid 'warm light for all mankind'. Stark Tower's reactor was a marvel, but it was just a prototype; he knew that he could light up the eastern seaboard, if he could just get his calculations right...

There was the sudden loud sound of a rooster crowing behind them, and Tony put one foot down a tad too hard – but it didn't even dent the material. External forcefields or no, it was made to take a beating. Some sort of alloy similar to his armour's? But even the armour got dented...

The rooster crowed a second time, then a third, before falling silent. Something about that tickled a memory in Tony's brain, part of the late-night reading he'd done that had been a bit further off the map than most of the legends – stuff that started getting contradictory, with multiple tellings, that wasn't _directly_ related to Thor and Loki. But there had been something about a rooster – he remembered, because the text had used the word 'cock'. It had been four in the morning and he'd started giggling like a schoolgirl – oh, who was he kidding, he'd have started giggling like a schoolgirl if it had been four in the afternoon. What had it been? "'...crowing... sooty-red cock, from the halls of Hel,'" he mumbled to himself. One of the heralds of –

"Well, that certainly is a large red cock," Steve said, pausing to look back over his shoulder at the thing.

Tony stared at Steve. Steve looked back at him, innocence personified. Tony felt his eye twitch.

"You!" Tony exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at him. "You have been holding out on me!"

Phil – Tony felt his heart twist as he made that comparison; why did Phil have to be such a goddamned idiot, anyway, dying, especially if the afterlife was this miserable place – but it was a fair comparison: Phil would have been proud by how completely bland Steve managed to keep his expression. "I have no idea what you're talking ab– "

Between one syllable and the next, he was gone.

"Steve!" Tony lunged forward, looking about wildly – but Steve hadn't slipped or fallen, he hadn't moved at all, he was just _gone_. Nothing met Tony's fingertips but empty air. _Breathe_, he reminded himself forcibly – _breathe_, Steve had appeared in this exact same way, he'd probably be back in just a second – would he? What had Steve said – he'd said he'd been '_slipping in and out'_, slipping through time... had this just been one more stop on his trip? Would he come back?

The sudden weight of loneliness made him physically stagger. Desperately, he looked back the way they'd come, to see whether or not the giantess still stood watch – but that end of the bridge, too, had been swallowed by the mists. Vertigo washed over him. If he turned in a circle three times, would he be too dizzy to know which way he'd come from, and which way he was going? It hadn't bothered him when he'd walked away from Hel – but as soon as Steve had started following those tracks, he'd gotten a sense of direction, and now, although he was confined to but two paths, the ease by which he could become disoriented stole his breath. The thought that walking back to Móðguðr wouldn't be all that bad – they'd hardly spent more than a minute walking along the bridge – was no consolation. Even just thinking about retracing his steps made him feel uneasy.

Mind control? Back to the sentience theory. "Shit," Tony muttered, clamping one hand down on the bridge's handrail. It dented beneath the gauntlet, and he let go of it quickly – it wasn't made as the same stuff as the floor, then. Good to know before he decided to put any real weight against it.

He only had two real options: wait, or don't. If he stayed – well, he wasn't all that thirsty yet, but eventually he'd need food, water, and to take a piss. Without the filtration system hooked up – since he was wearing regular clothes underneath it – that last one would require a fair bit of dismantling. Steve was much quicker than him on foot, and would doubtless be able to track him, if he'd been able to track Brynhildr's wagon – he'd catch him up, if he reappeared. And if he didn't... well, Tony had no idea how to judge time, here in the mists, without a single working toy to his name. How long could he wait? How long would it take, if Steve was going to reappear? Delaying felt – _wrong_.

But he didn't just want to abandon Steve – he couldn't just leave him behind –

_Captain America's a big boy, and this one's got more experience with the weird than you,_ the first part of his brain snapped at his doubts. _He'll know what happened._

_Hah, you think? How relieved did he look when he realized you could see him?_

_He's slipping through time and universes. What are the odds he'll reappear? I don't owe him anything._

_Don't you?_

He wanted off the damn bridge, enough to stuff the tiny, protesting voice in a box and shove it to the back of his head with all the other detritus. It was something he was practised at; guilt was useful for self-flagellation and therefore for motivation, but uncontrolled, quickly became a liability. And it wasn't like he didn't have a lifetime's practise at ignoring his conscience.

Gingerly – he didn't want to snap the railing off entirely – he scraped at the golden rail with a jagged edge on his gauntlet, where it had sustained superficial damage. The metal gave way easily beneath even minimal force; it could have actually been pure gold, but Tony resisted the urge to rip off a chunk and test its weight. When he'd finished scratching out the arrow, he added his initials, and then turned and followed it. Steve – if he reappeared – would understand it. Of course he would, he'd lead men through warzones, through wilderness, he was all over all that 'leaving signs' or whatever shit.

The one bit of advice on the subject that Tony remembered from childhood bubbled up like a nervous giggle. _If you're lost, stay where you are, so that people can find you more easily._ Yeah, that had worked _so well_ for him in the past – he wasn't about to start following it now. Steve would understand.

He wasn't sure how long he kept trudging across the bridge. Below, the rush of the river was a constant background roar, and the grey mist ensured that no matter which way he looked, he only saw the same amount of bridge each time. It could have been a half-hour, or it could have been a full hour; Tony had never been good at judging time when he didn't have an external reference (which was more often than most people realized; they didn't know how easy it was to get lost in his head. Though that was really because they just didn't have brains as massive as his own – who could blame them, when the space inside their heads was mundanely small?). _Distance_, yes, but he was, as Rogers might say, pants at judging time. Possibly it had something to do with how he found it difficult to maintain a steady pace when doing... well, almost anything.

When the other side finally appeared, he felt his breath leave him in a rush that he wouldn't acknowledge enough to call a sigh of relief. In the distance, the mist stretched out endlessly, until it didn't: the transition was just as jarringly sudden as it had been when they'd reached the Gjöll. The mist rose up like a blank grey wall, dreary and foreboding, and Tony clanked straight into it without pause. Since when in his life had he ever cared about where he was unwelcome?

A moment later, he cursed as he nearly overbalanced, his right boot coming down a good decimetre below where he thought it would. There were stairs leading down, cut into the rock – and it was definitely rock, Tony realized as he squinted at it, of the same sort that the cliffs were made of. The dull grey made it difficult to tell where the steps were unless he stared straight at them, and he'd nearly done a header down the entire flight, without his helmet on. How far they went, he couldn't tell; they were swallowed up entirely by the mist after a few yards. He shoved the helmet back on and re-engaged the locks before hitting the manual release for the onboard oxygen supply. Without Steve to talk to, there was no point in keeping his head unprotected. Freedom of movement wasn't worth the risk of a broken neck.

The same thing that made the average calculator useless to him kept track of the number of stairs as he descended, without him having to consciously think about it, and gave him little updates whenever he hit a landmark. It was what he'd based the suit's HUD systems off of, but those he used to keep track of things that he couldn't necessarily see or hear for himself. At about five hundred stairs, he found himself hoping that he wasn't going to have to climb back _up_ an equal number of stairs at some point. When he veered either left or right, grey rock walls loomed up in front of him, like they'd been summoned from the mist for just that purpose. They were rough enough that Steve probably could have climbed them, but in the suit there was no way for Tony to even try – which wasn't to say he didn't make an attempt. But despite whatever malleable material the bridge rail had been made out of, these were not just for show, and without power he wasn't going to be able to punch hand-holds in solid rock.

At about a thousand steps, the light started getting dimmer. Tony kept his breathing as even as he could. This matched up with what he'd read, in the same section that he'd skimmed over about the Gjallerbrú. Valleys so dark and deep that no light could penetrate their depths, which didn't mean he couldn't wish for a flashlight. The Mark VI had some LEDs that he could have used to throw together a crank-powered light, but he'd done away with those on the Mark VII when he'd upgraded the night vision, because external flashlights were never going to look anything but tacky. Really, he should just have allotted a bit of storage space – but he'd used the extra space to make room for the new-and-improved hand-lasers-of-doom, fat lot of good that they'd been.

Space, unfortunately, was always going to be a problem – unless he could figure out where and how the Hulk's extra mass got stored when Bruce wasn't being big and green. The initial extra mass had come from the energy, of course, the stupendous amounts put out when half a nuclear core had burned up. The appearance of the Hulk hadn't just saved Bruce's life. But him absorbing the vast majority of that radiation still didn't account for his bulk – there was just too much. He pulled it from somewhere else. And while how it attached itself to his existing mass was absolutely fascinating, it was really more biology. Tony was more interested in where it was stored, and how to get more of it.

His clean energy sources could run themselves for years. But if he could combine those two ideas – well, he could scratch the words 'energy supply' forever off of humanity's list of problems, and 'world hunger' while he was at it, too, along with, oh, 'water supply', 'global warming', and probably every other problem on the list other than 'chronic assholishness'. But Bruce and him – they could do amazing things together. Bruce was already working on the problem, but from SHIELD's dossier Tony had gathered that he was looking at the _entire_ problem of how the Hulk worked, and getting slowed down every time he ran off to play doctor in third-world countries. Give him a set of labs, the chance to really focus, combine his brilliant ideas with Tony's – what _couldn't_ they do?

Two thousand steps, and Tony's footsteps were slower, now, less sure. He couldn't see the steps in front of him anymore; he could barely see the way forward, and then only as a slightly lighter grey patch than the walls. He kept his right hand on the wall, now, using it as a guide and also as support. The path had curved back and forth several times, and he had no idea which direction he was facing, now. Was the curve just natural in mountains, or was he actually not going anywhere? Given how the light was dying it seemed that 'cave' would be more accurate a description than 'valley', but it was impossible to see if there was a roof through the damn mist.

At four thousand, six hundred ninety-one steps, when the last of the light had long since faded, the stairs ended. He found this out when he stumbled, bringing his foot down too hard. But when he walked five paces beyond that, there were four steps up, nearly tripping him with their suddenness – and then beyond that, a little way, more stairs, in brief intervals as the passage continued to twist and turn. The little stumbles made him aware of all his aches – pulled muscles, bruises that even the armour didn't keep him from having (and bruises that the armour had given him), the cut on his forehead that pulled every time he frowned. He was sweaty, hot, and thirsty, and he needed to take a piss.

It was the last need that finally forced him to stop, after ascending a few stairs, so that he could take the time to dismantle the armour enough to get his fly undone. He hoped that whomever came after him didn't mind – but, oh, hell, if these tunnels were as long as all that, he'd probably stepped in several piles of waste by now. The thought made him shudder – fuck other people, anyway. He did release one gauntlet long enough to carefully feel the step on which he was putting the disassembled bits of armour – that, at least, he didn't need light for, not when the schematics unrolled themselves in his brain like he was in front of one of his holo-tables. But he didn't want to be sticking the parts into anything... unwise, even if just the thought of taking off his helmet and breathing in other people's excrement made him want to vomit (and then he had to focus hard on not doing that, because that would mean he _had_ to take off the helmet, shit, don't vomit, _don't vomit_).

Putting the armour back together afterward was just as laborious. The manual releases for this section had been tricky – joints and cabling and all sorts of stuff that wasn't easily disassembled – even if they were, as just proved, entirely worth it. Tony took a moment to enshrine this moment in his memory, just in case he ever considered designing another suit in the theme of the Mark III, which had only a minimal amount of manual releases.

He continued on through the darkness, with the wall as his guide; if there were any branching forks opening from the other wall, which was five or so metres away the last time he checked, he never had a chance to notice them. But going along trying to find them would be futile, and slow him down way too much, when he had no idea how long this path was supposed to go on for in the first place – he spent a while cursing at himself for not asking Móðguðr. She had a house – he should have asked for water, or supplies, if this was going to take a while – the myth he'd read hadn't specified any amount of time that he recalled, but vague memories of the Lord of the Rings and other bedtime tales, read to him in his mother's soft voice, floated up to his consciousness. _Days_seemed to be a theme. Fuck, he was an idiot. He was so thirsty. So tired.

He didn't turn around. He couldn't. The reluctance that he'd felt on the bridge came back full force – he couldn't retrace his steps or he'd never get out of here. How long had he been walking? His brain hadn't been keeping track when Steve had been there – and why hadn't it, he wondered – but coughed up other information when he considered the problem: three thousand four hundred eighty-nine steps across the Gjallerbrú; four thousand six hundred ninety-one stairs, but the stairs were short and stubby, they didn't count as full paces; ten thousand nine hundred eighty-nine of mixed steps and stairs until he'd taken his bathroom break... hauling around the bulk of the armour was getting harder. Forget water, he wanted _coffee_, glorious caffeine to revitalize his brain and body. The night before last he'd slept well – he should have been in his lab, finalizing all the details for the Tower, but Pepper... well, but Pepper. But last night she'd been off to DC, and he'd been busy with homework. Caffeine and adrenaline had kept him going during the fight, no problem – it wasn't as if he didn't have practise working after an all-nighter – but at some point during this long walk through the dark, the adrenaline had worn off, and his last coffee had to have been hours ago.

At some point he blinked and the numbers in his head doubled. They felt fuzzy. How many steps had it been? Was it growing lighter? He tried squinting into the dark, but the only lights he could see were the imaginary ones from the random firing of his photoreceptors, flailing about without any input.

Tiredness made his feet drag. His next step was too incautious and he was off-balance when his boot hit a stair; he didn't manage to catch himself this time, the armour being too slow to respond while unpowered. Tony fell to his knees.

He hadn't rested on the walk out of Afghanistan. He'd fallen, a couple of times, sliding in the sand, but he hadn't stopped, he hadn't been able to stop –

But that walk had only _felt_ like forever; he knew in his head it had been quite short. As soon as he'd lit up the depot the Air Force had scrambled, sent choppers out to see what was up. Tony had probably spent more time digging himself out of the sand where he'd landed than he had walking.

No one was looking for him out here. He wondered what his funeral would be like – or if there'd be one at all. He hadn't specified anything in his will, had thought he'd be considerate and let Pepper do whatever she wanted – and then promptly fucked up and _called her_ right before he died, Jesus. Last time he hadn't had a funeral – last time they had only been ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-whatever certain that he was dead. But driving a nuke into an alien portal... that was pretty dead, right?

Exhaustion dragged at him. He'd have to stop sooner or later – and he was already down. In the armour, without power, he was probably just as safe unconscious as he was awake. He'd just grab... a couple hours' sleep...

* * *

Something pulled his faceplate up, the metal groaning before the manual release was suddenly triggered and his entire helmet was torn away.

Tony flailed, his arms oddly heavy and slow to respond. His right arm came up in a clumsy punch and was brushed aside. Everything was dark – someone had managed to get past JARVIS again, then, shit, they'd killed the lights –

"Tony!" Steve shouted at him, and Tony suddenly remembered.

"Shit," he coughed, his throat painfully dry. "Steve?"

"Yeah – yeah," Steve breathed, sounding – well, he sounded panicked, and that was never a good sign, Captain America panicking. Even when the Helicarrier engine had blown Rogers had sounded – well, actually a lot more in-control than he had been a moment before. So the ultimate soldier found a warzone easier to deal with than a social confrontation – who knew? "Thank god – I thought I recognized your armour, but I couldn't tell in the dark – "

"Copping a feel?" Tony attempted to put his leer into his tone, but the words ended up being more of a croak than anything else. He coughed a few times and swallowed uncomfortably until his throat only felt like the Mojave instead of the Sahara. "Gonna say this right up front, if you're still wearing that un-American flag, I am off-limits. No making out with fake patriots, I have – "

"Wait. Flag?" Steve asked, and everything in Tony's brain screamed at him, _Shit_.

Because Steve had been reality-wandering, popping in and out – what's to say there wasn't another Steve doing the exact same thing?

He scrambled for words to fill the silence, but before he could come up with a single coherent sentence, Steve continued, "You – you're still the same Tony as before? We were in Helheim, and you could see me, and now you can – well, you can still hear me – "

"Yeah, yeah," Tony agreed, nodding with more enthusiasm than the statement truly merited. It was possible, of course, that this was _still_ some other Steve, who had just met some other Tony who was also wandering through Helheim – infinite worlds, branches, whatever, the Foster Theory had some experimental evidence but they'd been years away from _actual travel_ – though if (_when_) he got back home he was definitely going to pull all of the latest stuff and start putting some serious thought into it himself. Really, SHIELD had to declassify it, they were doing the world a disservice by keeping it away from guys like Witten and Maldacena. Foster was off studying wormholes and SHIELD had Selvig doing the same thing, but her theory _so obviously_ had enormous implications that they'd barely begun to explore, including some that they'd ignored entirely as being secondary concerns.

"Did you just – you just appeared back here?" he asked, levering himself upright – had Steve pulled him into his _lap? –_ to a sitting position with a groan. Maybe taking a nap hadn't been the greatest idea. His mind felt a bit clearer, but his body – _ow_. It was one giant mass of _stiff_, and definitely not the good kind.

"Yeah, and then I tripped over you. I might not have realized you were there, otherwise – really? You're the same guy as before, older than my Tony – "

" – and more settled, you said," Tony interrupted a bit testily, because distinguished was all very well and good but right now he'd have paid a good chunk of his fortune to be as young as Steve, because he swore that nothing had ached this badly the morning after at that age. Granted, kinky sex was perhaps not a fair comparison to getting tossed around inside a turbine.

Steve breathed out something that sounded like a cross between a laugh and a sob. "Huh. First time I've reappeared somewhere I've been before," he said, and shit, was his voice wobbling? Tony tentatively extended a hand, making vague groping motions until he found an arm that he could pat awkwardly. Or, wait, maybe that was a leg – Steve _was_ pretty flexible.

"Glad to see – uh – you, again," he offered. "Sorry about the lights. This part of the road's been... pretty dark."

"Not seeing anything might be nice for a while," Steve said, and yup, his voice was definitely wobbling, shit, what was he supposed to do with an upset super soldier, he knew exactly how to calm Rhodey down when he was mad (usually it was his fault Rhodey was angry in the first place) but attempting to be there for him whenever he'd lost comrades had been – mostly, he'd turned on a sappy, no-guns-no-explosions movie, and gotten Rhodey completely drunk. Right now he didn't even have a working phone, let alone a three-metre screen and a bottle of bourbon. He also had no idea what Steve might have – wait, that was a thing people did to be comforting, they talked – or should he not ask?

His train of thought was abruptly derailed, the re-railed, as Steve suddenly hauled him to his feet, which, _ow_. His body did _not_ like that. Tony swore through gritted teeth, prompting Steve to ask anxiously, "Are you okay?" But at least that wobbly note had disappeared – well, right, of course Captain America was a mother hen, give him somebody else to worry about and he'd be fine –

"No, I'm fine, just – took a nap, but Jesus, I want an icepack, my bruises have bruises," he brushed him off, and then, with no input from his brain whatsoever, his mouth asked, "Where did you go?" He winced instantly, and shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked – but of course Steve couldn't see the expression on his face, because, well, Tony couldn't see what he looked like, either, and with the armour on couldn't tell if Steve had tightened his grip (at least, he hadn't tightened his grip as much as Thor had – if he was able to dent that plating, clearly, the Mark VIII needed to be started on _soon_– not that he hadn't known that already, given what he'd put the VII through today –

"Elsewhere." Steve's voice was low and as dark as the rest of this place. "There were – a few places. A lot of places. I saw some SHIELD scientists, discussing... me. The bullet that I was shot with – it threw up flags when they analyzed it, temporal anomalies." Tony had to give him credit – he was pretty sure _Rogers_ wouldn't have had any idea what 'temporal anomalies' were, had science fiction even been invented back then? Asimov would still have been working in his parent's candy store... as Steve went on, though, he had to wonder if it wasn't just that Steve's life was_extremely weird_ – "They think it was meant to temporally dislocate me, but." The pause sounded like a verbal shrug, and when Steve spoke again, there was a quiet despair to his voice that Tony didn't like at _all_. "I saw my body. I guess it really did kill me – it only managed to unhinge my soul."

Tony kept his mouth shut. For once. Oh, religion might be the opiate of the masses – even if one religion, at least, was looking to have some basis in fact – but. Steve was – if he wanted to believe in souls – it felt cruel to say anything against that. What else did the guy have?

"Did they say why you keep appearing with that flag?" he tried to joke. It fell rather flat.

Steve replied with strained, fake levity. "Nah. Guess it's just patriotism. It really would be inappropriate to wear an actual flag like this," he said, and _damn_, he actually did sound disapproving about that. Maybe-dead, maybe-disembodied, and yet he still managed to hold true to the Righteous American Way.

Tony would have said something, to fill in the silence, but Steve went on first, before he could. "How long have I been gone?"

Tony shrugged, and gathered from the greater resistance he felt on his right shoulder that Steve was still holding on to him. Well, in the dark, he could let it go, maybe, just this once. "Dunno, you know me, bad at keeping track of time. At least a few hours. Less than a day?" he hazarded. He wondered how long he'd slept – long enough that he was going to need to relieve his bladder again, soon. Ugh. Steve was _barefoot_, walking through this place. And had sent his helmet rolling off – where?

"Oh. That's shorter, then. I think."

"You think?" Tony tried to pull away, to go look for his helmet, and then realized that if he pulled away from the wall there was a chance he might get horribly disoriented and end up backtracking. "Where'd you toss my helmet to?"

"I – oh, sorry," Steve said, and abruptly let go of Tony's shoulder. Tony staggered, not realizing how much he'd been leaning into Steve – no wonder the guy had been worried. He decided to lean into the wall instead. It was vaguely creepy, not being able to hear Steve pattering off – he knew the guy was light on his feet, but it wasn't like there was any other noise around here.

"It's around here somewhere," Steve said after only a moment or two. Maybe he was creeped out by the dark and the silence, too. Well, it was a possibility. "I shouldn't have just tossed it away, sorry – but you were just lying there – "

"Yeah, well, long day," Tony shrugged, keeping his voice lighthearted. "Pulled an all-nighter researching, then there was an alien invasion – you know how it goes."

"Yeah." The darkness – a sort of bitter grimness – was back in Steve's voice again. Well, shit. What had he seen? "Here, found it."

"Thanks," Tony said, as much from sincerity – well, hey, it was Steve's fault that it had been lost in the first place – as to just give Steve another indication of his location. It was too easy to get turned around in the dark. "But, well, hey. This bit of the journey's still in all the myths I've read – " something abruptly picked up his hands – he absolutely did _not_ jump – and put something helmet-shaped into them, " – I'm just not sure how long it's supposed to go."

"Well, that could be a problem, if either of us needed food or water," Steve said wryly, but there were still far too many dark undertones in his voice for Tony to be comfortable.

"Huh? _I_ need some," Tony pointed out. "Pretty sure you're supposed to need some _more_, what with your super-metabolism. Speaking of which, I need to use the little men's room, or what passes, so you may want to stand – over on that side." Bare feet. Oh god, just the thought made his skin crawl as he struggled with the armour again.

"I – really? I thought, because it was Helheim – "

"Oh, not this again," Tony snapped.

"Sorry," Steve said, a note of humour in his voice, and hey, he found irritating Tony funny, well, Tony found irritating other people funny, the least he could do was let himself be irritated if it'd cheer up Steve a bit. "But I've been wandering around like this for... a while... and I haven't gotten hungry or thirsty at all. Have you?" There was a rustle of fabric – Steve retying his skirt, perhaps.

"I would honestly be happier to see a bottle of Dasani than a bottle of whiskey right now," Tony said, his voice just as dry as his throat. His stomach rumbled, the mention of _food_ suddenly reminding him that, while not as pressing a requirement, its absence was keenly felt. "I wouldn't say no to a cheeseburger, either."

"Oh," said Steve, sounding confused by this, which made no sense, because how on Earth was – well, that was the point, wasn't it? He'd been shot by a time-travel, reality-travel device, there was no telling how it might screw with his metabolism.

"How long have you been doing this?" Tony asked, narrowing his eyes as he finished reassembling the armour again. He needed at least one hand free to keep on the wall when they started walking again.

There was a hesitating silence. "A while," Steve repeated finally, and Tony rolled his eyes – somehow, Steve must have divined this fact (perhaps he just knew his version of Tony too well – although if that had been the case, how had the alternate him managed to kill him? How determined had that Tony _been?_) because he continued on quickly enough. "I don't know how long – it's hard to tell when I keep arriving at different times. I guess at least a couple of weeks." Steve's voice shifted, growing alert and hard. "Hang on – I can see something. There's light."

Tony looked around, even thought he doubted his (maybe possibly aging) non-supersoldier eyes would see anything new, because he'd been wandering in this darkness for god-knew how long and there'd been zilch. Only, all of a sudden, there wasn't: an outline appeared in front of him, just a shade darker than the rest of the blackness, but it was _something_. Tony blinked and the outline grew more obvious, turned into Steve, who, like Tony, was looking up, down, and everywhere for the light source. Beams of colour played over Steve's features and the mist surrounding them – huh, the damn mist was still there, although far less dense than it had been, and the terrain was just as featureless as ever.

There was nothing in the sky – and hey, it was sky, not a cave after all, unless it was a cave with a roof capable of producing light on its own, which, granted, aliens, couldn't rule it out. Tony kept an eye on it anyway, because he had always been a fan of the _Alien_ movies and the things that wanted to eat you never forgot about _up_. As if to confirm this line of reasoning, Cap – who, from all descriptions, would certainly have the experience to know – was also staring at the sky – but then, a moment later, the mist above twisted and parted, glowing swirls of colour emerging from it like technicoloured storm clouds. Storm clouds which were swirling in a pattern familiar from tapes of New Mexico –

"The bifrost," Tony said, reaching out one hand to pull Steve away, because they were standing _right under_ the funnel that was forming. Fortunately, Steve seemed to be of the same mind, and, being considerably quicker on his feet, was also pulling Tony along with him – which was excellent, because a moment later a rainbow slammed into the ground and vomited up a two-metre-tall blond norse god in a dress.

Tony blinked. The rainbow disappeared, although the clouds, and their lovely, blessed light were kind enough to remain. The cross-dressing norseman – well, really more like norse _teenager;_ he had one of those scraggly beard things that happened when college freshmen decided they wanted to look older, not realizing that their utter fail actually made them look _younger,_ and much more stupid –also stayed. Apparently he was rather unhappy about this, for he immediately turned his head up to the sky and roared, "LOKI! You have sent me astray!"


	2. Thrymskvitha

"_Thor?_" Steve said, sounding both surprised and jubilant. He quickly jogged over, and for his effort was rewarded with what would have been a rib-shattering hug if given to anybody else – teenager or no, Thor was still _built_. Between the dress and the flag-cum-kilt, they made a good pair, although Thor definitely had Steve beat out for style. The dress was long and flowing, with golden threads interwoven in a dazzling pattern that was at once beautiful and – Tony tilted his head, considering it – yup, assuming that that the metal wasn't _actually_ gold, the dress was definitely meant to provide significant protection to the wearer. Well, not-a-teenager-Thor-in-a-world-of-at-least-partial-sanity had managed to pull off mail that was _actually_ sculpted to his biceps, so Tony supposed it wasn't surprising.

The boobs, though, those were a bit surprising, unless it was stuffing. Tony squinted again. If it _was_ stuffing, it was done by a _very_ experienced drag-queen, and Tony had known and appreciated the art of some of the finest. They didn't tend to sport half-grown beards, admittedly, but then Thor was also wearing a headpiece, and Tony deduced from gauzy scarves and beaded hooks that, although they had been knocked completely askew, they were meant to conceal Thor's face. Probably for the best; even if he'd had the dignity to shave the beard off, Thor would have had to go to quite a lot of work to pull off a merely androgynous look, let alone feminine.

"Ah, and the Man of Iron!" Thor set Steve back on the ground firmly – Steve's knees buckled – and strode over to clap Tony on the shoulder. It was a blow that made Tony fully appreciate just how strong Steve's legs must be, if the finely sculpted muscles had not already ensured that; if the armor had been powered, he might have been able to stay upright, but unpowered his stability engineering was no match for the strength of a Norse god. Tony went toppling over, only to be caught and hauled upright again before he could hit the ground.

"Ah, my apologies!" Thor cried. "I misjudged my strength against your suit. Forgive me, my friend," he peered worriedly at Tony's faceplate, "but although I know I have not yet met you, I had thought your armor better able to withstand such mild blows."

"Well if I wasn't completely out of power – " Tony flipped his faceplate up and caught a whiff of Thor's breath. "Are you _drunk_?" he asked incredulously. By all reports Thor was stronger, healed faster, and was generally all-round more indestructible than a super soldier, and Tony had read the reports about how quickly Rogers metabolized alcohol. Though... Thor being drunk would explain a lot.

"Aye, indeed!" Thor confirmed a moment later, clapping him on the shoulder again with less force, although still enough to make Tony stagger. He turned to give Steve, who had joined them, the same treatment. "T'would be unreasonable to expect the Lady Freyja to be sent to her doom unsupported by naught but her maidservants – although, of course, it is unreasonable to think that she would be sent at all, as if any in Asgard would allow it!" He sounded indignant about this. "But jǫtnar are cowardly wretches, and no doubt they think us no better. Come, my friends! Your presence must surely be the reason that my brother diverted the bridge here."

"Wait, Loki?" Steve asked. Above them, clouds were already forming. Thor had a grip on both of their shoulders; Steve barely winced, but Tony was pretty sure he was going to have dents in his armor.

"Wait a minute," he babbled. Going up against Loki un-armoured – well, okay, he'd pulled that trick earlier, walking into Stark Tower, and gotten defenestrated for his trouble, _thank you very much_. But that had been _his_ tower, and the Mark VII had come to his rescue – which was very much _not a possibility_ this time –

The rainbow returned, and Tony had only a moment to wish that he'd spent the time putting his faceplate back down rather than objecting, because _holy crap why did these people not invent a capsule_, people were _not meant_ to be exposed to the raw forced of interstellar, inter-realm, inter-whatever travel, all the colours rushing past them far faster than any single hue could register and pulling them along with such force that he felt his bones quiver, the skin on his face flattening like he'd opened the faceplate while cruising along at Mach 2, and his brains were going to leak out the ears –

They arrived – materialized? – at their destination, and Thor's grip was all that kept Tony on his feet. On Thor's other side, Steve looked distinctly pale and nauseous, and quickly clapped a hand over his mouth. Tony sympathized; he, too, felt like vomiting all over the faux-golden (alien technology meaning that it was probably worth more than _actual_ gold) floor.

"That headdress must be reinforced before we leave for Jǫtunheimr, or our ruse shall be seen through immediately," said a feminine voice in an accent far more refined than Thor's. Tony's head snapped around, his worries of throwing up forgotten as he slammed down the faceplate – not that the suit would give him much protection against Loki, not without any weapons. Out of the corner of his eye, before the faceplate reduced his range of vision, he saw Steve slide into a combat stance.

"As you say, brother," Thor said sheepishly, leaving Tony and Steve to stride over to Loki – who was also wearing a dress, and pulling it off quite a bit better than Thor did, because despite Thor calling Loki 'brother', Tony was damn sure that this Loki was, in fact, currently a woman. Those cheekbones hadn't been quite shaped like that back in New York, and youth didn't explain _that_much of a difference. Well, he was supposed to be a shapeshifter, wasn't he? She? If he changed forms, did he also change pronouns, or was that one of those things that would get him yelled at by Pepper for being insensitive to LGBTQ people? Or would _not_ changing pronouns – aw, fuck it, Tony certainly wasn't asking that, not when there were more important questions at hand, like _what the hell, Thor, he betrayed –_

Hold on.

Back up. Come on, they were _so_ obviously teenagers.

Tony groaned. "Wrong tense," he muttered. "G – aw, fuck it."

"Thor, what are you doing," Steve said, as tense as a wire. "That's – "

But it couldn't be the wrong tense – Thor knew who they were... even as he'd said he hadn't. But myths, legends, and prophecies were seemingly coming to light all over; knowledge of the future was nothing special here. The timelines were all wrong for what he knew, and apparently for what Steve knew, but if this was a different reality...

Tony had read the transcript of Thor's interview with Coulson on the helicarrier; he knew Loki's (the Loki from his world's) story. It was filled with Daddy issues and always being smarter than everyone around you and always feeling different. One step to the left – it might have been Tony telling the world to kneel, because it wasn't as if he hadn't thought about it, how much _better_ the world could go under one unified, intelligent direction. It could have been him – if he were a batshit crazy little fuck like Loki, which was, really, the most pertinent point here, but maybe in this world, Loki wasn't either.

Or maybe it was just _not yet. _This world might be divergent from his own, but so far it was following pretty close to the myths of Tony's, and there was always Baldur's death to consider, not to mention freaking _Ragnarok._

Could he judge a man (teenager – he wanted say _kid_, but, no, they were at least on the upper end of the teenage scale, if such a scale even applied to millennia-long-lived aliens) who was going to maybe commit a crime? Of course not, that was _insane_ – but the thought was there, that this wasn't the ordinary, everyday potential of people to be scum. This was a bastard who would world domination. At the last report from JARVIS, he'd been beaten into a crater by the Hulk, but how close had it been, if Loki had been a bit smarter, used another one of his illusions to get away... There were still thousands of Chitauri back on the ground in Manhattan. Who knew how many people they'd kill before they were finally put down, or how many they'd killed already.

And in another world, Tony had killed Steve Rogers. Of course he couldn't judge this Loki. Not that he was in much of a position to do anything even if he wanted to try.

" – Loki," Steve finished, and Tony's thoughts slowed back to normal speed, his focus unwinding.

"Different world, different Loki, Steve," he sighed.

"Quite," murmured Loki, with just a hint of a sneer. He sashayed closer to Thor, looking a great deal like Pepper when she was deciding on a new pair of heels, and made a strange motion with his hands. Thor's headdress shimmered; when it settled, it looked considerably stiffer and more metallic. "I know not what grudge you may have with whatever version of me exists in the world you hail from, but I do not think _I_ have done anything to earn your enmity."

Slowly, Steve relaxed out of combat stance, but he muttered to Tony, "Keep your guard up."

"Thank you, brother," Thor was saying, his voice a bit muffled as he began quite competently arranging the stiffened fabric to obscure his face. "If you might conjure dresses for the mortals as well, I am sure that they would be of aid to us in this endeavour. Are they not said to be mighty companions?"

"Indeed," said Loki, sounding bored, except all of a sudden there was a dress in his hands and he was advancing upon Steve, who was visibly tensing up again. "Cease your hostility, Captain," he commanded, "I have done naught to you but facilitate your removal from Helheim, at my daughter's request." Wait, _what?_ Tony hoped like hell that there was definitely time-fuckery going on there, because while he doubtfully conceded that Loki might be over a reasonable age of consent, how the hell would Hel have had enough time to grow up? Although, admittedly, she could possibly be a couple of centuries old and Loki might merely be a few centuries old_er_. Goddamned aliens.

"She does not approve of the living wandering her realm," Loki held up the dress, looking at Steve critically. The gown was more similar to Loki's than it was to Thor's, lacking both arms and a headdress, but there was no way that Squarejaw Steve over there was going to be able to pull it off without something to obscure his chin.

Grudgingly, and a little helplessly, Steve took the dress, while Loki frowned at him, seemingly in deep concentration. A moment later, Loki snapped his fingers, and Steve dropped the dress and squawked, "What the _hell?_"

Tony also squawked, less because _shit Captain America swore_ and far more because _holy shit sudden boobs_, completely uncovered boobs, and the flag was in dire danger of falling off and uncovering the rest of Steve because although Steve made an extremely large and fit woman, he was still slightly smaller than he was as a man.

"No," Tony said firmly, because there was no fucking way he was shaving his goatee or getting it alien-Nair'd-off or what-the-hell-ever, if Thor could wear a veil so could they. "We'll use veils – they don't have to be brides' veils, just say they're traditional, turn him back _right now_." A moment later he realized his mistake in talking about this like it was _actually happening_, because this was such a bad idea for so many reasons, perhaps the least of which was that Tony hadn't cross-dressed since college and had no desire to ever do so again.

Loki shrugged and snapped his fingers again; a moment later, Steve was boob-less, and feeling awkwardly at his crotch. He stopped after a second when they all three stared at him. Tony was willing to bet that if it had been Rogers, twenty-five year old kid that he was, he'd have been crimson, but evidently Steve, older and wiser, had learned to control that reaction – although his ears did go very pink.

"Just put on the dress, Captain," Loki sighed, conjuring a veil and handing it to Steve, who took it and picked up the dress with a muttered, "_Jesus_." He didn't make any move to unwrap his flag.

After another, longer moment of being stared at, Steve cleared his throat and said pointedly, "A little privacy?" Then he shook his head. "Wait, no – _why_ am I – why are we all cross-dressing?"

"We are to pose as the Lady Freyja and her handmaidens," Thor explained earnestly. "The giant Þrymr snuck into the halls of Asgard not three days ago and stole the hammer Mjolnir; then, as further insult," Thor scowled, "the craven cur demanded the hand of Freyja in marriage, as payment for the hammer."

"But you're the only one who can pick up Mjolnir," Steve protested, sounding confused.

Thor's face brightened. "This is so? Then we are successful, in your world," he said happily, clapping Steve upon the shoulder.

"We shall not, of course, allow Þrymr to gain the one or keep the other; and thus our ruse, to put the giant off his guard long enough to regain the weapon," Loki put in, twirling his hands again and producing yet another dress. This one – well, Tony could appreciate the colours, the gold and rubies scheme going on there nicely complimented his armour, but there was the problem of having to take his armour _off_, first, when surrounded by people who could quite easily crush him without thinking, and who were mostly drunk and bound to get drunker. This was a really bad idea.

"Yeah, hold on a second," Tony said, raising one hand to ward off any sudden attack of fabric and gemstones. "I'm not sure I'd be – "

_Pain_.

Tony cut himself off with a choked gasp, his shoulders hunching in as he struggled to breathe through it. The sharp jab of agony faded, leaving behind a persistent tugging ache. "Shit. You don't have your hammer? No, of course not, you just said," he spoke over top of any explanation the Asgardians might offer, "But you have to have another power source around here somewhere, this is the – the bridge room, or whatever, but there has to be – " As he spoke he hit the release switches on his armour, and it began to disassemble, leaving him feeling more naked than not. Removing the armour was still a terrible idea, but now he had no choice; he might need access to the arc reactor for this, because – " – no way that it's a similar system, I need to figure out a hook-up, _now_ – "

He found himself looking at Loki, even if he was currently a teenage girl, because in every Norse myth ever, well, one got the feeling that the main reason the gods kept Loki around was that he was the only one of them that could count past ten without taking his boots off – well, except for Odin. Loki wasn't looking back, though; his mouth was moving, and he might have been speaking, but Tony couldn't hear, suddenly, as the world greyed out around him. This was bad. This was very bad. If he could feel it, like this, then the shrapnel was moving, and if it was moving then it was ripping him up inside –

Steve's face was in front of him, then, suddenly. Steve's face, and Thor's, and Loki's, and the last one in particular was weird because Loki was upside down. Anti-gravity? Flight? But the other two were also at odd angles – floor, Tony realized, as he struggled to breathe. He was on the floor and it was making everything worse, his shoulders falling too far back – and then inside his chest there was pressure, _pressure, oh god_, like somebody had reached in and was squeezing his heart with their fist –

Someone's hands were laid against his face. In the background, dimly, he could hear someone saying, _"Look at me – look at me, Tony,_" but he had no idea who it was. It didn't matter anyway. Even as his body kept fighting for breath, he knew his time was up. It had been up as soon as he'd latched onto the nuke. Maybe this had all just been a bizarre dying dream. Those happened, right? He was sure... he'd heard... of...

* * *

Someone was patting his cheek. Tony let his head loll to the side. "Mmwa?" he managed to get out. Everything hurt; his chest ached abominably, like goddamned Obidiah had risen from the dead, put on his rip-off suit (so unrefined, so unstreamlined, so over the top and so much weaker for it) and stomped on his chest a few times. With him not in his own suit.

Which, from the feel of it, was definitely the situation right now. The surface he was lying on was cold and hard, and heat was leeching away through his shirt with every passing moment. What had...?

Tony cracked his eyes open, and Rogers' – _Steve's_ – face swam into view. He blinked, and the image cleared up. "Oh thank God," Steve said fervently.

- right, _that_ was what had happened, Tony realized, his brain starting to kick back in. He struggled to raise his head; the initial effort made his thoughts go all swimmy again, but then everything began to get easier, like his body had remembered how it was supposed to work and decided to cooperate. With clumsy hands, he pawed at his chest, even though he could clearly see the arc reactor lit up again, shining through his shirt. But how? There weren't any plugs or cabling nearby, and repowering the arc reactor wouldn't do a damn thing to repair the damage already done by the shrapnel moving – how long had he been out?

"You are well again?" Thor's booming voice interrupted his thoughts. There was genuine concern there, though, and that was a bit touching. From Thor's perspective, they'd just met – had they? Tony needed to grill somebody about the rules of this place.

"Yeah, I'm good," he said, managing to sit up with only minimal support from Steve. Steve left his hand on Tony's shoulder, though, like he was worried Tony was going to tip over sideways if he didn't. Just to prove him wrong, Tony clambered to his feet on his own, although it was somewhat ruined by needing to lean against a metal-embossed wall (if he hadn't known he was in Asgard before, he would now, because nobody pimped out with metal like Asgardians) to catch his breath. "I'm fine – Jesus, Steve, I'm _fine_, stop hovering," he insisted, and then he focused his gaze on Loki and Thor. "Why the hell am I fine, how did you fix me?"

"I may lack the power of Mjolnir as of yet, but the name of the Thunderer is writ in my blood; I thus command some portion of the full power that shall be mine one day," Thor proclaimed. "And my brother, talented magician that he is," Loki looked mildly pleased by this praise, "was well-able to repair any brief damage done. But come, my friends! If you are well, then I would not leave Mjolnir in Þrymr's unworthy hands for another moment more."

"You need not fear further failure of your heart," Loki said, and damned if he didn't manage to actually sound _reassuring_ about it. "I have vanished the remaining shards."

Tony felt his mouth work. He'd just – vanished them. Just like that. He'd fixed the timebomb that Afghanistan had left, when the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the world had all assured Tony that given the locations of the remaining pieces of shrapnel, if he wanted to be rid of them it would be less life-threatening to just get a heart transplant. And not that he hadn't considered it, but his immune system was already fucked from having the arc reactor, and sure he could be boosted to the top of any waitlist, but – no, he couldn't. He couldn't take a perfectly good heart from somebody else who might need it. There were designs for a mechanical heart sitting on his private servers, one that would actually work far more efficiently than the one currently stuck in his chest, but even that he'd never gotten around to doing anything about, because, well. The operation would leave him in recovery for how damn long? In Afghanistan he hadn't had an option, but if he hadn't been hit, if he'd not been wounded the way he was, he'd have managed his escape long before everybody gave up looking for him. Instead he'd gotten back to find that oh, by the way, it's been _three fucking months_ and everyone thought you were dead. These days he had too much to do; every waking breath counted, it was hard enough convincing himself to take time off to sleep, some days – there was no way he could afford the recovery time. But now... if Loki was telling the truth... now all of those considerations were gone. He still had the arc reactor, but...

"Why'd you leave the reactor?" he asked Loki, one hand coming up almost unconsciously to cover up the light in his chest.

Loki tilted his head. "A few shards of metal are easy to make disappear, but the amount of flesh that I should have to re-grow to replace that device within your chest would require you to spend many weeks laid up in the healing halls. It is quite cleverly placed; I thought it would do no harm to let it remain." He sounded uncertain, on the last part, and Tony couldn't tell if that was true or just more affectation. Trickster Gods – damn them all.

"No, it's fine," Tony said quickly. It was _useless_, now – at least in the everyday sense; god knew that he had found and would no doubt continue to find all sorts of uses for the power generated by a small, clean nuclear reactor – but he found, strangely, that he... didn't want it gone. "It's... it's fine." Breathing, all of a sudden, seemed remarkably easy, like somebody had run previously smoggy air through a scrubber.

"Then let us make our final preparations, and be off!" Thor boomed. He looked pointedly at the dresses that had been discarded on the floor.

And, well – Tony was already out of the armour, and it was in pieces, the sort that meant that it was not going to get reassembled without a whole lot of effort or its internal power supply restarting, so – he cracked up, he couldn't take it anymore, the half-incredulous, half-reluctant look on Steve's face was just too much when he sighed, "Let's do this, then," and picked up the dress.

Barely managing to prevent himself from cackling, Tony pushed off from the wall, spread his arms wide, and drawled at Loki, "Doll me up, baby."

* * *

Five minutes later, refreshed by about a litre of conjured water (Tony had forgotten how thirsty he'd been until he was offered a drink – funny how almost-dying did that – but the offer brought back the thirst quick enough) Tony was once more trying to restrain himself from puking – seriously, they needed a fucking capsule, that was ridiculous – and having a rather intense flashback to his second doctoral defense, and in particular the afterparty – or rather, the aftermath of the afterparty, since he didn't remember the event itself. To this day he had no idea what had happened – luckily, nobody else did, either, as far as he kew – but he'd woken up dressed in a breathtakingly tight corset, with his legs shaved and his junk secured in some extremely uncomfortable ways. At least this time Tony was pretty sure that bolt-cutters would not be required to shimmy out of this getup. The conjured dress was even surprisingly comfortable, despite the rubies looking like they should be grinding into his skin with every incautious movement.

Loki had also done something to fix the cut on his face, with the side-effect that he was feeling more wrinkle-free than he had in years. At some point, Tony was seriously going to have to sit down and talk equations with him, unless he could find some other 'magician' (the word grated, but if that was actually what Asgard called its science...). Might-become-an-insane-supervillain or no, if Loki did turn out to be the best option into understanding Asgardian science/magic/truth, Tony would sit and learn at his feet. (Until he worked out enough that he could advance on his own, of course, which would probably take all of five minutes – approximately the same amount of time he figured his pride would let him tolerate such a demeaning position without rolling out the wisecracks. Loki was an arrogant prick in any world, and really, it did _not_ take one to know one in this case.)

Which didn't mean his repulsors wouldn't be close at hand, whether learning from Loki or exploring some strange new world. While Steve had been struggling considerably harder with his dress (he had the waist of a sixteen year old girl, but the shoulders were more difficult to conceal), Tony had stripped the left gauntlet's repulsor, along with enough wiring to hook it up to his own arc reactor. The wires were easy enough to hide under the bodice of the dress, and the lens itself merely resembled a large, pretty (if cheap – ironic, because it _really_ wasn't) jewel that he hung off of his belt.

The nausea of the second trip-by-bifrost faded, giving him the chance to look around. "Well, this place... sucks," he commented, borrowing phrasing from Bruce because he was a shameless thief.

Jǫtunheimr looked like the ass-end of nowhere – it was marginally less boring than Helheim, which was sort of like saying that it wasn't quite as cold as absolute zero. Although it was pretty cold; their breath misted in the air whenever they breathed out, and the skin on the upper half of his face was quickly going numb, although everywhere covered by the enchanted clothes was perfectly toasty. (_Magic_, honestly. Seriously, he had to learn and patent this shit, he could make another fortune off of it. Plus, wouldn't Pepper find it nice? She got cold legs, wearing a skirt in New York in wintertime.)

Loki looked over at him and Steve critically, and then made one of his mysterious gestures; Tony felt his forehead begin to defrost, even as he catalogued the gesture and compared it to the others he'd seen Loki make while conjuring things. "I advise you not to speak thusly in the presence of our host," he said dryly, indicating with a nod where a group of beings were striding towards them. "In fact, you ought hold your tongues entirely – neither of you know the Allspeak, and such a discrepancy will mark you as foreign to Asgard."

"Right," Tony had time to mumble, and then their hosts were too near for more chatter, their enormous strides having eaten up the distance in a frankly mindbogglingly short time. Tony had seen the Hulk leaping about, but if they were nowhere near him in girth, some of the jǫtnar could have topped him for height – and they seemed to have similar feelings about clothes, or the lack of necessity thereof. If they hadn't been _blue_ and so obviously alien, Tony might have felt cold looking at them. Instead he found himself studying their tattoos. Were they just cultural, or did they have some deeper meaning? There had been runes in the bridge room...

How many new alien species had Tony met today, and they were all – well, almost all; the dragon sure wasn't, and neither were its lesser cousins the flying metal slugs – almost all bipedal, capable of producing sound that registered in the human hearing range. This was his third alien world, and the light here was almost the same as that back on earth; he'd be willing to bet his life that it put out nearly the same spectrum, and that this world had a similarly protective magnetic field to Earth's (he _was_ betting his life, unless the dress was proofed against charged particles). Was there life out there on other, non-Earth-similar worlds, and the Asgardians and the rest of the space-faring Nine Realms just ignored it? It seemed unlikely. The Kepler search might be digging up new exo-planets all the time, but even if they'd found planets in the goldilocks zone, planets in the goldilocks zone with atmosphere, radiation presence, gravity, magnetic field, _etcetera_ that were within human tolerances... one of those had yet to be discovered.

And besides – Yggdrasil had been significantly _off_ the map of things he'd expected to see in space. Four realms with similar species... no, given that extradimensional realities were already in the equation, it seemed more likely that the Nine Realms weren't separated in _space_ at all, just as the Foster Theory speculated. A subset of close realities, on the other hand... but then what had happened to all the other possibilities? There should have been more than just _nine_.

The largest giant stopped in front of them, leaving behind a trail of small cracks in the ice, rather than simple footprints. He easily topped four metres – more than tall enough that Tony quickly got a crick in his neck craning his head back to look, and so stopped. Loki stepped forward and curtseyed gracefully; the rest of them stayed put, probably more out of a sense of manliness than anything else. Steve had the grace of a ballerina, and Thor was similarly light on his feet. And if Tony knew how to curtsey, well, that was none of their business.

"Most noble and mighty Þrymr," Loki said, and wow, he really wasn't wasting any time in laying it on with a shovel – Tony had to admire the way his voice went all breathless, seeming to insinuate to all and sundry that he was about to swoon from awe of the listener's muscles, "I am the handmaiden Amora, servant of the most benevolent and gracious Lady Freyja. It is my deep honour to make introduction to you in this glad hour, and convey her blushing and wholehearted acceptance of your suit. You may pray excuse if our party is small, for, upon hearing that the great Þrymr wished to claim her hand in marriage, my Lady would do nothing less than at once make the hastiest preparations, that she might gaze upon her suitor and join him in happy matrimony all the sooner." He curtseyed again at the end of this speech, so deeply he might have been kneeling, and indicated Thor without unbowing his head.

Thor, for his part, stood in silence – apparently he was no more comfortable with being shapechanged than Steve had been, for he hadn't even allowed Loki to alter his voice – and then nodded once, regally. It was a very mannish nod; Tony winced behind his veil.

"The bards' best descriptions of your bountiful figure pale besides the magnificence of your true self," Þrymr boomed in a voice like a glacier cracking rock, and wow, was he seriously checking out Thor's padding? Tony stared, nonplussed, as the giant went to his knees – which put his head at roughly equal height as Thor – and then awkwardly grabbed Thor's hand, and kissed it. Thor pulled it back very quickly.

"That is Hammer-level fail, right there," Tony muttered, and then had to conceal an 'Ow!' as Steve elbowed him in the ribs. He glanced over; Steve's baby blues were glaring at him over top of the (red-white-and-blue – never let it be said that Loki didn't have a sense of humour) veil. Right, no talking.

"Let us depart, and make haste at once for the feasthall; there we shall all make merry, and I shall make the Lady Freyja a maid no longer," Þrymr declared with a leer, leaping back up to his feet. Tony stumbled as the ice crackled ominously – and then yelped, as one of the other giants surged forward and plucked him from the ground. If it was a yelp high-pitched enough to be from a woman, then he figured that he couldn't be blamed; he was thrown over the giant's shoulder and the entire troop set off, running at a pace that – well, Steve might have been able to keep up, super-soldier that he was, but _Jesus Christ_ the giant had totally just copped a feel on him, and that was _not on_. He wanted to grab for the repulsor, but that was squashed up against the brute's neck; instead, Tony pounded at the giant's broad tattooed back with his fist until the enormous hand shifted to someplace less sexual-harassment-lawsuit worthy, although who was he kidding, any court would throw this out, this was ridiculous.

Their gait was jarring enough that Tony was sure he was going to have a stiff neck after this – he was too old for this whiplash bullshit, especially when only a day ago he'd nearly been mushed by the Helicarrier's engines; even the most top-of-the-line inertial dampening could only do so much against that type of acceleration. He looked over and saw that at least he wasn't alone in this indignity. Thor's expression was impossible to read beneath all his myriad veils, but Loki was gesturing frantically at Tony, his other hand pointing at his chin –

- oh, right, the veil. It hadn't held up so well to being turned upside down; Tony hastily clamped a hand down on it to hold it over his beard. On his other side, Steve was resignedly doing the same thing to hide his massively square jaw, and Tony did not want to know what sort of shit went down in _his_ universe that he was so blasé with all of this.

Their mode of transport did have one major advantage, in that it quickly got them where they were going. Barely a few minutes had passed before Tony found himself unceremoniously dumped back on his feet; luckily, Steve grabbed him and held him upright long enough for his head to stop swimming. They had arrived at an enormous wooden – fort? Barn? Tony didn't know; who built things out of wood, anyway? – which was surrounded by a few pitiful strands of trees, the first vegetation that Tony had seen on any of these alien worlds – he'd begun to wonder about the oxygen supply.

"Look upon my hall, my Lady, for is it not magnificent?" Þrymr boasted as he led the way inside. "Bestir ye, giants, put straw on the benches! Now Freyja I bring, to be my bride, the daughter of Njorth, out of Noatun!"

_Barn, definitely,_ Tony decided as soon as he crossed the threshold and the smell of animals – _oh, god, are they eating in the middle of this muck_ – hit his nose. Sure, he hadn't eaten for a good day at least, but any appetite he might have been working on was dead on the floor. Steve went into a coughing fit, but waved him off when Tony held up his hands, hovering them in worried a, _are you okay?_ gesture. Well, super-soldier senses – Tony didn't envy him, there was _a pile of animal shit on the floor_, what the hell, he'd nearly stepped in it! Jǫtnar everywhere were scurrying about, strewing about straw, which really only served to make the place _more_ dangerous; it made the dungpiles more difficult to spot, and did absolutely nothing at all for the stench.

Þrymr had pulled Thor along to the high table, where there were two chairs; Loki glided along beside them in perfect grace, and took up a position at Thor's right hand, then indicated with a jerk of his head that Tony and Steve should position themselves further back, nearer to the wall. Tony had no problems with this arrangement – other than the major problem of being in here in the first place – because it was less likely to get him stepped on by some careless giant, but, "Why are we even _here?_" he moaned to Steve. None of the giants seemed to hear, but then, they all seemed to speak at a bellow. _Tony_ could barely hear himself above all the din, not to mention the lowing of – cattle? Why were there _cattle_? Though that did explain the shit.

"Golden-horned cattle from my stables," Þrymr said proudly, and if Tony squinted past the haze caused by the use of torches – _torches_, Jesus, so much for advanced aliens – then he could see that their horns were, indeed, painted gold and encrusted with gems. The first cattle were led past the high table, followed by a long string of even larger beasts, which snorted and pawed at the floor; each one required a giant handler. "Jet-black oxen; the finest heads in all of Jǫtunheimr, and indeed in all the realms. They are my pride and joy, their weath a sign of my greatness," Þrymr declared, and then proceeded to extol the virtues of every single one. Tony was even happier to be back against the wall, rather than closer to the action, when he saw one of the cattle take a shit _right there_. But then a shame-faced giant quickly swept away the mess with a broom – completely failing to get rid of it, or of the smell, or do anything other than shove it up against another wall. Tony closed his eyes and tried very hard to not think about what he was standing on. He was wearing a fucking magic dress, if it could protect him from cold, it would protect him from parasites, it would protect him from parasites –

As the cattle were finally, _finally_ led away, more giants marched in, in groups of four, each group with a litter resting on their shoulders, and an enormous heap of gold and jewels piled up upon that. Tony felt himself boggle at the sight. What the hell were those litters made out of, that they could take the weight of that much gold? The same type of thing as held the Gjallerbrú up? That seemed more likely to be a forcefield, but if the giants had access to forcefields, surely they'd not be using fucking torches in a _barn. _The litters were paper-thin – the possible applications of such a material –

"Many my gems, and many my jewels!" Þrymr proclaimed, to cheering from his giants. "Freyja alone did I lack, methinks. And now that she has come to be my bride, I am surely the wealthiest of all jǫtnar. Now let us feast, then make whole this union!"

Tony clapped his hands over his ears as the hall was filled with the din of a hundred frost giants cheering. Beside him, Steve was doing the same, managing to show off his biceps to great, if currently unwanted, effect. The great doors opened again and huge platters of food were marched in, borne by the same giants who had been leading around oxen and sweeping away shit only a minute ago. He spotted an enormous roasted salmon, at least two metres long, garnished with some sort of vegetable; the smell of it combined with the still-strong stench of manure (and seriously, shouldn't his nose have adapted by now and started ignoring it?) to make him gag.

His attempts to do so unnoticeably led him to miss whatever it was that Steve caught, but all of a sudden the other man stepped forward, up to Thor's elbow – oh, Loki had been gesturing. Steve didn't make much of a serving girl. His attempts to cut slices of salmon for Thor's were all fingers and thumbs, and he was standing much too close –

The knife Steve had been holding clattered to the floor. Steve was gone.

"Sorcery!" roared Þrymr.

Every giant was on their feet. Weapons sprouted from their hands like – well, like magic, because those weapons were made of _ice_, Tony realized, as several came uncomfortably close. One speartip poked against his side, painfully, and out of the corner of his eye Tony saw more red stain the golden cloth than the rubies could account for. He went very still – one measly repulsor wasn't going to do him much good when he'd be gutted long before he'd even be able to aim it.

_Shit._ There was a hall full of hostile aliens glaring at him, and he had no armour.

One of those aliens was Loki; his glare held much more _What the hell was that?_ than _How darest thou!_ But more importantly he _wasn't_ offering an explanation, and Tony found himself glaring back, because _Hello, Loki _Silvertongue?

He swallowed, hard – hoping that the veil hid the bobbing of his Adam's apple fully – and tried to pitch his voice for a falsetto, which, _shit_, was _another_ thing hadn't done since his MIT days. "Pray excuse," he attempted to say, and nearly broke into a coughing fit, holding back only with the epic fortitude that went along with being a superhero, "my sister's disappearance." His voice was rapidly going squeakier than a falsetto, but right now squeaking was easier on his vocal chords. "T'is no magick of her own, but rather a curse laid upon her," and he had clearly been surrounded by these nuts for too long, 'cause that phrasing had rolled off his tongue without a moment's thought on his part.

He glared back at Loki. _There you go – now start living up to your name!_

The hostility from the giants had not lessened. "Your servingmaid speaks a strange tongue," Þrymr rumbled.

"She was not born in Asgard," Loki cut in smoothly, thank fucking _god_ – literally. "She and her fair sister are of poor Midgard," and Tony resisted the urge to glare at him, because Earth wasn't that bad off, _thanks_, "and betrothed untimely to two brothers, who fell in battle with the witch that cursed the elder thus: that, for the crime of her beauty, whenever another contemplated her most seemly visage, she would disappear, for such a time as until the admirer's thoughts turned elsewhere. T'was the younger's thought to don a veil, and she did so in solidarity with her sister, but alas! The veil must have slipped. I pray you, whomever saw her face, to cease such thoughts, 'lest she mournfully wander the void evermore! For until such time as the witch is dead, the curse continues, and there are not many men who would consent to fight such a foul creature for the hand of a woman who will not let her face be seen uncovered. So moved by their sad plight was my Lady Freyja that she agreed to be patron to the pair until such time as they might be wed to suitors of greater skill at arms."

Oh, _hell_ no. Tony's eyes widened, but Loki's pinky finger made a sudden, sharp twitch, and Tony gagged on air, not managing to get a single word of protest out before Þrymr declared jovially, "Then the Lady Freyja may rejoice further, for the warriors of my clan are surpassed by none in their skill at arms, and the bravery of Þrymr's clan is known far and wide! After our wedding, I shall host a contest, that the mightiest of my giants may vie for their hands. The strongest champions shall go forth to slay the witch and, upon returning, have the honour of wedding the beauteous Freyja's beloved servants."

Tony hadn't ever considered himself much of a xenophobe – but then, he'd never really thought much about how to treat _actual_ _fucking aliens_. And as much as he loved sex, as much as he liked to admire people, the giants? Really not doing it for him. It was more their proportions, rather than the blue skin – well, the proportions, and the uncleanliness, and the _smell_ – as well as the size. Because if they thought he was a woman, then – no, no, that was a _terrible_ idea. He glared daggers at Loki as the weapons that had been pointed at him withdrew, but three of the largest giants around him did not – and then he jumped. The guy on his left had just copped a feel! Was he the same guy who had been carrying him earlier? Why yes, Tony had a fantastic ass, but that didn't mean it was up for grabs, figuratively or literally!

But Loki paid him no attention – he had other issues to deal with, such as explaining how 'Lady Freyja' had managed to polish off a full roast ox in no time at all (which was impressive, since Tony was sure he'd seen Thor down a few platters of salmon, too). Tony didn't catch much of the lengthy, rambling, fairy-tale-esque explanation, most of his attention firmly on the three giants who'd stuck around to 'court' him (oh, god). He backed up a bit, wincing when something squished under his shoe, but needing the wall to be very firmly behind him.

The one who'd groped him placed a hand over his heart, and declared in a deep bass rumble, "I am Dumbr – " Tony stared in disbelief; _seriously?_ Was that just a really shitty translation? He wished he knew more about the Allspeak. It wasn't just a language, obviously, but – really, _Dumbr?_ " – and this is my brother, Dofri. Together no amount of Aesir or Jǫtnar can stand against us, as we proved in battle not three nights ago, when Laufey sent three armies against our liege lord. Dofri and myself stood against an entire army, we two alone, and felled them by the score; when the final tally of the bodies was made, we had slain three thousand."

Dofri broke in, his chest puffed out enough that it almost seemed normal for his height – although this meant that Tony, craning his neck upward, couldn't actually see the giant's head – and continued with the boasting. "Nor can any witch hope to lay us low. When Þrymr strove to slay the witch of the Gallows-wood, and take this hall as his own, t'was we who scouted out her lair, with craft and cunning, and divined her weaknesses. Accept our suit, and we shall free your sister from this unkind enchantment, that all may look upon her and admire her beauty once again."

"Uh," said Tony weakly, when the pair of brothers both paused to look at him expectantly. Then he had to cover his mouth and pretend it was a burp, because it had come out a few registers lower than any woman's voice should have been able to reach. He tried again, and managed to only be a bit squeaky this time. "That's... impressive?"

"Hardly, at all!" declared the third giant, who apparently had been waiting for Tony to render judgement. "For while these two buffoons might barely manage to protect each other's flanks, I, Vardrun, hewed through _two_ armies, alone with my mighty sword, suffering none of the enemy to live! And when that fight was done, I advanced to the Sea of Ice, and there downed ten ships of Laufey's fleet by fire and axe, that they might not bring reinforcements to the battle! If your sister's curse is to be lifted, then I am surely the warrior to do it; but I will seek only your hand, fair maiden, for as any with wisdom know, the darker-haired ladies are by far the loveliest." He looked at Tony expectantly, though Tony had absolutely no idea what _for_. This lack of action upon Tony's part didn't seem to deter Vardrun, however, who after a moment seized her hand and kissed the back of it – and ew, had that been a bit of tongue? Way to destroy any sense of class, even_he_ didn't do that – well, not to strangers, anyway, and not at _all_, these days, Pepper thought it was gross.

"I – see," Tony said, his voice almost cracking. He coughed several times and attempted to peer around the giants, trying to catch Loki's eye and see if the Allspeech could translate the signal for_hurry the fuck up_.

But Loki had problems of his own. Þrymr was leaning forward as if he wanted to remove Thor's veil, only to jerk back all of a sudden, and every person in the hall heard him when he boomed out, "Why so fearful, the eyes of Freyja? Fire, methinks, from her eyes burns forth."

The three giants – they needed to take some lessons from Loki; Tony was beginning to think that when he'd said 'champions', Þrymr had meant _champion idiots,_ because their lies _sucked_ – were at least distracted from ogling him. The dress had definitely been a mistake; Tony should have stayed in Asgard to play with his armour. And kept Steve with him. Of course, then they would have been abandoned with no supplies in another alien realm, and have pissed off the only people they knew, but –

"No sleep has Freyja for eight nights found, so hot was her longing for Jǫtunheimr," Loki declared, and Tony changed his mind; the three stooges shouldn't take lessons from Loki, because Loki was seriously dropping the ball here, first with Steve's disappearance and now this – could his voice _get_ any less convincing? Was this because he was young, or something? Were teenage Asgardians unable to tell lies? Because Tony had been a champion liar as a teenager, ask anybody. Loki got points for audacity, given the way Thor was glaring at Þrymr – even with Thor's eyes hidden, Tony could see it – but his presentation needed _work_.

Evidently sensing the awkwardness, a giantess hustled up – and, oh, hey, they did have women, that was nice to know, they didn't just reproduce by kidnapping wives from other worlds – to stand to one side of the not-so-happy couple. It was easy to tell that she _was_ a woman, because apparently the female jǫtnar didn't feel the need to cover up much either, but any beauty that her breasts lent her – and they did look quite finely shaped – was erased by the ugly smirk that she wore.

The smirk was erased a moment later when Steve, with what Tony was beginning to suspect was _deliberately awkward_ timing, reappeared a metre away from where he'd disappeared. The dress that he had been wearing very definitely did _not_ reappear with him – instead, he had that stupid blue flag wrapped around him again, trapping his arms and legs.

The giantess whipped out a knife, her teeth bared in a shriek; Steve, who had appeared with non-zero momentum, fell forward and caught himself on her thigh, very nearly avoiding a face-plant into her groin. She shoved him away and he automatically began to curl up into a roll, but there was something off about his movements – Tony could see that he was moving too slow, as if dizzy, and well shit, he had just jumped realities, hadn't he? The edge of one bench caught Steve's head with a sickening _crack_, and he fell to the floor, groaning faintly.

"No!" Tony didn't even realize that it had been him who had shouted until he suddenly had spears pointed at him again – shit, that hadn't sounded like a woman _at all_ – but Vardrun, Dofri and Dumbr apparently saw fit to come to his rescue; none of the weapons touched his skin. Unfortunately, Vardrun also saw fit to restrain him, shoving him back against the wall with an admonishment that Tony barely heard. Steve had stopped moving.

"That is an Aesir, and no man of Midgard!" Þrymr roared. His left arm had gained a good metre of ice, which ended in a pick. "There are none upon that lesser world of such tall stature or broad girth! Lady Freyja, Maid Amora, I have been kind, but this trickery demands explanation!"

"I have no explanation, for I have ne'er seen this man before," Loki said, also on his feet with his hands spread wide. Which was good, Tony realized, as he squirmed in Vardrun's grip, because that gave him all the more room to wiggle his fingers and conjure whatever he wanted. "Perhaps he is some unwanted suitor, looking to claim my lady's hand for his own, but no matter his purpose, he is of no concern of ours. Pray, do with him as you will, although I should not think punishment amiss; he has disrupted my lady's wedding feast quite rudely."

_Jesus Christ_ – okay, so the flag was covering Steve a bit, but how had Loki _not recognized_ – Tony abruptly cut off that train of thought and had to stop staring at Steve in moment to give Loki a (very brief) look of admiration. Maybe Loki had just been lazy, before, because the utter _sincerity_ with which he spoke the words was – well, it was a work of art. Unfortunately that didn't solve the primary problem, which was that Loki had just thrown Steve under the bus. Thor stirred – apparently he wasn't happy with this outcome, either, go Thor, that's why he was Tony's favourite of the two, aside from the whole _psychotic mass murderer_ bit – but Loki put a hand on one of his broad shoulders, and Thor subsided. _Shit_.

"Take him away," Þrymr ordered two nearby giants, slowly sinking back into his own chair with a glower. "Wring from him his purpose, here, and quickly, that I might use his blood as an offering afore my wedding night."

_Not good!_ Tony thought, panicked, trying to project the sentiment at Loki without making it clear to all of the giants still clustered around him. One of the giants that Þrymr had spoken to attempted to pick Steve up by the flag, but the flag, of course, wasn't attached to Steve; it just twisted around and Steve rolled out of it. The other giant grunted, in what sounded like amusement, and picked Steve up by the arm. He dangled limply from the giant's grip, like some oversized rag doll, and the two made their way out of the room with a jaunty spring to their step.

Loki finally turned and glanced in Tony's direction, but Tony couldn't keep making faces at him, because with the intruder gone, his three suitors were back to looking at him with their full attention. Tony widened his eyes, attempting to convey his urgency, and Dofri evidently took this to mean he needed reassurance, "Have no fear, gentle mortal; for though Asgardians may be true brutes, he shall not last long before the attentions of Gyllir and Gusnir! Though no doubt my brother and I could break him more swiftly; no creature so low could long withstand the presence of two so mighty as we."

Which, right, not so reassuring. Tony felt his eyes widening even more, this time not wholly voluntarily. Loki caught his gaze for just a moment and jerked his head minutely in the direction that Steve had been carried off, before turning back to serving Thor (who was working on his – was that a _seventh_ slab of salmon? At this point Thor had to have actually eaten nearly his own mass in meat; clearly Asgardian digestive systems worked _very_ differently, and there had to be something about mass shifting in there – something to look into, then, if he got stalled using the Hulk research as a basis). But, right, he had to get his head in the game, because he had one stripped-down repulsor and no arm brace to use it with, which meant it was going to be half-power all the way.

But this – this was bullshitting his way into someplace he shouldn't be, and that was not a job for Iron Man. That was a job for Tony Stark. He let himself grin beneath the veil, where the three stooges wouldn't see it, careful to keep all trace of it away from his eyes. Not that they would have seen amusement in it, because Steve had just gotten dragged off to an alien inquisition. But a challenge – hell _yes_.

"I have never seen a man of Asgard before," he said, voice pitched high, subtly shifting his posture. In his mind's eye was Pepper, looking coy – weight shifted onto one foot, cocking the hips; he drew one hand up to his chest, fingers curled (it was all about the _curves_), drawing attention to the boobs that Loki had ensured were filled out nicely – without, thankfully, giving him actual _boobs_, because as much as he liked boobs, he did not want a set of his own. Well, maybe. But not when the guy giving them was a trickster god who might find it funny to leave him stuck like that.

"But you are of Lady Freyja's household," Dumbr protested, right on cue. Tony smirked, and this one he let reach his eyes; closed them, slightly, so that he could look up at Dumbr through his eyelashes. He shifted his posture further, so that when he breathed out, it threw the boobs into prominence again.

"My Lady is exceedingly kind, but to protect my sister, she has kept us cloistered," he murmured, and hey, it was actually easier to pitch the falsetto as not _quite_ so false if he let it go all breathy. "Until she brought us here, where we might find more... valiant suitors... we had not seen a man in a year and a day. But I do confess to some curiosity; might I see him, before his death?"

Vardrun frowned, not liking this – none of the three liked it, Tony saw gleefully. He shifted his weight further, letting his body ease into a wholly unnatural curve. Damn, how did Pepper find this posture comfortable at _all_? Well, women _were_ more flexible. "Surely, he is off no consequence – the worm is little, and weak, compared to any giant's strength," Vardrun scoffed. "I could crush his head between my two hands."

"For me, it would take just one hand," Dofri growled.

Tony smiled, and let his eyes show it, again. "Oh, I am sure," he said sweetly, putting just a _dollop_ of doubt into his words, just enough to make all three of them focus on _him_, rather than on out-doing each other. "Forgive me my curiosity – I had merely wanted to see... but no matter. Of course, you are no doubt mightier than him, in _all_ respects."

_Go on, take the bait... _Dumbr, bless his heart, gobbled it down like Thor was gobbling salmon (_nine,_ now, good god). "Most certainly, but of course you could not know for sure, having never seen one of the maggots before!" he declared, clamping a heavy hand down on Tony's shoulder – but delicately, it seemed, out of deference to a supposed maiden. "Come, gentle maid, and before Gyllir and Gusnir begin their sport, I shall prove to you the vast inferiority of the Aesir."

"Brother, those chambers are not fit for her eyes," Dofri protested, as Dumbr steered Tony to the door – but he went along with them, Vardrun unhappily bringing up the rear with his own protest, "Like as not, those two have already begun." Tony's blood burned colder at that. _Shit_.

He slipped his left hand through the loop on his belt holding the repulsor core and leaned into Dumbr's hand, smiling up at him. "You are kind, good sir, to indulge me, and a brave man, to be so willing to enter the contest – or else simply most secure! But you know what they say about that." He glanced over his shoulder as they left the hall. Loki winked back at him.

His last comment might have been a bit too Earth-centric for his escorts, who all looked fairly confused, despite feeble attempts to hide it. He thought he saw Dofri about to open his mouth to ask just what it was 'they' said about 'that', but then Dumbr casually elbowed him as they walked along – well, Tony speed-walked, while the giants sort of shuffled – and he shut his mouth with a muted grunt.

Outside of the main hall, the corridors were small enough to be cramped for the giants, with floors, walls and ceilings made mostly of ice and ice-cold rock. It seemed like they had been carved out by rather amateur masons – which made the part of the three stooges' story about taking this place over from somebody else more plausible, at least; the hall, as much as it was a barn, had been built with more skill, while whoever had made this place couldn't even manage to get the steps even. Tony half-jumped down them, pre-empting what he could tell was about to be an attempt by Dumbr to pick him up; the height of the steps ranged from under a decimetre to a full metre. If he had to run up them in a hurry, it might be a problem.

Well, if he had to run back up them in a hurry, hopefully he'd be doing so with Steve, who would, of course, be fine because they were going to get there in time, so Steve could give him a piggy-back ride or something.

The only light was what filtered through the ice: cold, dim, and blue. Good thing he'd never had any difficulties seeing in the dark, then, despite a hatred for carrots while young. He wondered what the range of vision for jǫtnar was: could they see in infrared? X-rays? They couldn't see through the dresses, but the dresses were clearly _special_.If they were going to end up fighting their way out of this place, it would be good to know – but even if he could find a way to ask without it being suspicious, he didn't think his trio would know what he was talking about. They'd been flirting with him for the past quarter-hour and yet still thought he was _actually interested._

They stopped outside a door, which was less of a door and more just of a pane of ice, backlit by a cheery red glow. Vardrun shoved in front of them, and at a gesture from him, the ice receded – that was _definitely_ something to keep in mind, if they had to fight their way out of here. "I shall stop Gyllir and Gusnir before they do much damage," he said, not in time for Tony to miss hearing a pained grunt from beyond – there was no sound of impact against flesh, but shit, they were already starting, "that you may have a fair comparison, and note the true _smallness_ of the Aesir."

"Of course," Tony said, not quite managing to keep his voice from shaking. Luckily, the breathiness mostly hid it. He craned his neck, trying to see past Vardrun's bulk, but even when the giant strode forward all that Tony could make out were two other large shapes, standing in front of whatever was generating that red light. It wasn't flickering enough to be an ordinary fireplace – a forge? Why they'd have a forge when they made their weapons out of ice, he didn't want to know.

Lacking the reinforcement of the gauntlet would make firing the repulsor a careful exercise in not dislocating his wrist. The repulsors might be able to momentum-shift, but they couldn't take care of_all_ of it. The advantage of surprise would give him one clear shot, for certain, but after that he'd be lucky to get a second – he'd seen how fast the giants could move. But if Steve was groaning, then he was awake – give him a weapon, and he'd be good for at least one giant, and probably be an excellent distraction for the rest. Tony refused to let himself think otherwise, because if Steve hadn't roused from unconsciousness by now...

The first time he'd blown himself up in the lab (age nine, and in retrospect he was a bit surprised it had taken him that long), he'd gotten an earful about safety, and ever since he'd kept up with his first aid training. Since becoming Iron Man, he'd made a point of familiarizing himself with an EMT's level of knowledge. A head injury that knocked somebody out for more than a minute was Seriously Not Good; combine that with Steve's healing ability, and if he was still out by now, then – well, Tony wasn't going to think about it, because obviously Steve had just been stunned for a bit, and he would be fine. Steve was fine, or he would be fine, now that Tony was here. He loved playing cavalry – it was so much better than being the rescuee.

After a few moments of grunting – from the giants; Tony strained his ears, but couldn't hear anything that sounded in Steve's register – the two hulking shapes stood aside, and Vardrun beckoned them in. Tony had to look away to let his eyes readjust; he'd made the mistake of glancing over at the light source, which was, in fact, a forge. The table on which Steve – it had to be Steve – was laid out was right in front of it, which made it hard _not_ to look. Unfortunately, as giant-sized meant that it was about eye-level for Tony, the backlight of the forge meant that he was only able to really see Steve's outline – along with the outline of restraints.

"They don't have to stay, do they?" he indicated the Brothers Grim to Dumbr, letting just a hint of a whine slip through his voice. He'd have preferred sultry, but that was not something that he could pull off in a falsetto. But a whine was enough for Dofri to step forward after a moment – Dumbr apparently being reluctant to let go of his prized position of hanging onto Tony's shoulder – and, with some argument from the Grims, hustle them to the door and out into the hall.

Tony wasn't going to wait for a better opportunity. His left hand was already through the repulsor's loop; he tore it away from the belt, pulling the coiled wiring out until he had enough slack to bring his arm up and aim at Dumbr, who was still holding on to his shoulder. Simultaneously, he slid his foot back to brace his body and brought his right hand up to brace his left wrist. Then he fired.

The recoil slammed his hands back against his chest – if he hadn't been aiming up, he would have smacked himself in the face. It didn't dislocate his wrist, though, which was what he mostly cared about. It hit Dumbr beautifully, right in the chest, strong enough to toss him across the room. The look of betrayed surprise on his face as he died almost made Tony feel sorry for him for a moment, until he remembered how gung-ho he'd been about Steve getting tortured.

Vardrun roared in surprise, which, well, there went any hope of this being a quick or quiet fight; he was moving too fast for Tony to re-aim and re-brace. Instead he ducked his head and darted under the table with his eyes closed, popping back up and turning to face away from the forge before he opened them again – with Steve's left arm right in front of him. The dress, it seemed, protected just as well against heat as it did against cold; he could _feel_ the heat at his back, a carefully stoked furnace that ought to have been almost painfully hot, but it didn't cause him the slightest discomfort. He added it to his list of resources and smacked the cover open, even as he hit the shackle holding Steve's arm to the table with a low-powered repulsor blast. Fire: probably good against ice.

"Thanks," grunted Steve – _thank god, thank god, he's conscious and moving – very definitely moving,_ Tony registered, as Steve half sat up, grabbing a shard of the shackle and nailing Dofri in the eye with it as he came running back into the room. Then Tony had to duck away from Vardrun, who had made it around the table and was reaching for him with one giant hand; he aimed a half-power bolt at the shackle on Steve's ankle as he darted away, playing keep-away with the table in-between them, but that wouldn't last for long, not with the Gruesome Twosome right behind Dofri, who was still clutching at his eye –

Steve lashed out with his two free limbs and caught Vardrun in a lock that would have made Natasha proud. The scant glance that Tony got left him honestly confused as to how Steve managed to bend that way, but it certainly showed off Steve's thigh muscles. Tony ran around the table and braced himself against one of the legs as he fired a full-strength blast at the Grim out in front, sending him crashing backward into his brother; unfortunately, judging by the jarring numbness in his hand, he'd managed to dislocate his wrist this time. His fingers didn't seem to want to move anymore. In front of him, Dofri, with blood streaming down his face, snarled and charged.

"Shit," he mumbled, skittering back around the table legs again, missing the suit fervently. Behind him, there was an agonized grunt, and Tony nearly skidded to a halt, thinking for a moment that it was Steve – but no, it was too alien, one rough tone laid over a deeper base, for that. He risked his vision on a glance and saw that Steve had managed to shove Vardrun head-first at the forge, braining him on the edge of it; Vardrun lay senseless before it, his hair crisping from the heat, with a stripe of burned flesh on his forehead where he'd hit.

He was one more obstacle to navigate as Tony ran closer to the forge, narrowly avoiding Dofri's grasping hand as it swept under the table after him. Steve was a sitting duck – Dofri and the other Grim were focused on Tony in their anger, but as soon as what Steve'd done to Vardrun registered –

He swapped the repulsor to his other hand and darted back under the table, away from the forge and back toward the remaining two giants, presenting them with his already injured side. As hoped, Dofri grabbed at that arm, pulling him forward. The world nearly whited out as his wrist decided that numbness was for dorks, _white hot pain_ was where the cool kids were at, but he didn't need to brace for lower-powered blasts – he just aimed, and with two quick shots, Steve was free. At least Tony hoped he was free – if he'd missed a waist restraint he was going to be _so_ embarrassed, for the five seconds that it would take for the giants to kill him.

Dofri yanked on his arm again, hauling him up into the air, and things went fuzzy – and then the world turned upside down, as the giant threw him to the side. Self-defense lessons kicked in and he rolled clumsily as he hit the floor – or was it the wall? – managing to protect his head, although he was pretty sure he'd dislocated his left shoulder in his process. At this rate he might as well go for the elbow, too, get the whole set... he blinked a few times, hard, to clear his vision – _not_ because his eyes were watering, he was not crying, thank you, and if he was they would be manly tears of manly pain, _god fucking damnit ow_ –

By the time he could see clearly again, even though it had been only a few seconds at most, Steve had the situation well in hand. Dofri was lying unconscious – though still breathing – on the floor, his nose smashed in from what looked to be a supersoldier punch, while Steve danced around the last remaining Grim. As Tony watched, hauling himself up to a sitting position with his right hand, Steve leapt onto the table and ducked under the Grim's attempt to stab him with an icicle. Steve's right foot snapped up (and huh, that was _still _a nice view) and connected with the giant's temple. The Grim went down like a rock.

"I feel like I should be applauding, here," Tony huffed as he climbed to his feet.

"Are you okay?" Steve jumped off of the table with a cat's grace, running to the door and poking his head out before striding over to look at him in concern. "Your shoulder – "

"Dislocated, yeah," Tony waved it off. "There's nobody else coming? Feast and all, sure, but I'm surprised they didn't hear – OW!" Steve had shuffled over to his side as he'd rambled, he'd_thought_ just to take a look – because Steve seemed like the sort who would, if he could be reincarnated, end up a mother hen looking after a bunch of fluffy chickadees. Instead he'd slammed Tony's shoulder back into place.

"A little warning," he grumbled, to which Steve just rolled his eyes – which, yeah, fair. He rotated his shoulder gingerly, and then held out his wrist. Field reductions were not ideal, and with so many itty bitty bones he'd have preferred an x-ray to go along with it – unlikely, anytime soon – but right now he couldn't feel it at all, and he had no desire to lose his hand.

"This is worse," Steve said after a moment of examining it.

"No shit," Tony said, taking the opportunity to roll his eyes – which, of course, was when Steve _yanked_, and all of a sudden he could feel his hand again, and it _fucking hurt_. "Shit," he wheezed, curling into the wall, since Steve still had his hand. "Gimme my damn hand back – " Steve yanked a second time, and he felt something else pop in his wrist. The pain spiked, and then reduced itself to something much more bearable.

"Sorry," Steve said, looking truly apologetic. "Wrists are tricky."

"And _important_, to some of us," Tony griped, cradling his hand and flexing his fingers. If he lost his hand... well, it wouldn't be that big of a deal once he had the time to build himself a new one. But it was the _principle_ of the thing.

"But only to some of us," Steve said dryly, but was that... fondness, underneath? Tony peered at him out of the corner of his eye. After all, sure, they'd just downed a couple giants together, they were risking life and limb while crossdressing and naked, respectively, but...

The other Tony had killed Steve. How could Steve – how was he possibly looking past that?

"Right, well," Tony said briskly, uncurling from the wall, although he kept favouring his left arm. "You're shivering," he accused.

Steve was. The heat of the forge dropped off sharply; over on this side of the room, it might as well not have been there at all – which wasn't the way heat circulation ought to _work_, so apparently this room was more advanced than the rough stone walls would make it seem. "Where did they put your flag," he wondered, looking around.

"We need to go help Thor," Steve insisted. When Tony shot him a confused look, he added, "Listen. They're fighting above."

"Huh," Tony cocked his head to one side. So they were – he'd missed it, what with the blood thrumming in his ears and all. There was the distant sound of _boing-boing-boing_ – Mjolnir meeting targets at full-speed. "They'll be fine, Thor's got his hammer back," he waved off Steve's concern, because if there was a duo that did not need help in a fight, Thor and Loki would be it. And even if they _did_ need help, unless Steve got something to protect him from the cold, he wouldn't be the one to provide it. Tony could see that the sweat had frozen on his skin – how cold _was_ this place, without protection? "Jesus Christ, get over here before you give yourself hypothermia," he said impatiently.

Possibly Steve was colder than he realized, because when Tony grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the forge, he went complacently enough. The flag was lying in a corner, covering a pile of rusty, jagged-looking metal tools that Tony resolutely did not look at. Perhaps _that_ had been what the forge was for – although given the way that Steve was reacting, Tony rather suspected that it was just meant to keep non-jǫtnar prisoners alive. Any prisoner without protection wasn't likely to get far in the extreme cold.

"That won't keep you warm enough," he muttered, as he tossed Steve the flag. Steve took it, then held it out to one side, letting it soak in heat from the forge before finally wrapping it around himself and huddling in it. Tony ripped the loincloth off of one of the giants – and, okay, ew, but beggars couldn't be choosers – and spread it on the floor for Steve to stand on, biologically-contaminated side down – well, more-recently biologically-contaminated; it was _fur_, after all. It was probably full of lice, too.

At the forge, Vardrun was beginning to stir. Tony crossed over to him and raised the repulsor, preparing to put him permanently out of commission when Steve exclaimed, "Wait – don't kill him!"

"We need him for something?" Tony asked, looking up in surprise. Had he missed more than he'd thought during the fight? He would have sworn he'd only lost a couple of seconds.

Steve, gaping at him, sputtered, "You can't just – he's unconscious!"

"Right, and when he wakes up he'll be a headache," Tony said impatiently, a little coil of dreadful confusion mixing in his stomach. Steve hadn't killed Dofri or the other brother Grim, either, in the heat of combat – why not? Rogers certainly hadn't had any issues taking out Chitauri soldiers. The still-living giants would be a big problem, if they woke up and realized that he risked exposure moving away from the forge. If Tony left to go find Thor. If, if – if didn't fucking matter, they'd all been on board with the 'let's torture Steve' plan – they could rot in Helheim.

"He's a person. There're lines you don't cross," Steve growled.

"I'm pretty sure aliens aren't signatory to the Geneva Convention, and even if they were, oh, _look at the pile of torture tools,_" Tony said, only somewhere in there it turned into a shout. His injured wrist was throbbing, and belatedly he realized it was because he'd been gesturing, had thrown out his hand in the direction of that awful collection.

Vardrun was stirring. They didn't have time to finish this argument before he'd be up – Tony aimed a low-power repulsor blast at him and knocked him out again, inwardly fuming.

"That's what makes us better than them," Steve said softly, into the silence left by the absence of Vardrun's awakening.

"Bullshit," Tony glared at him. "Don't tell me you went around nicely tapping Nazis on the head during the war, Captain."

"No, but when we took prisoners, we took prisoners – we didn't kill them!" So apparently the war was a soft spot for this Captain America, too, even if it was years behind him.

"And you did your level best to take prisoners and _never_ shot to kill?" Tony gestured at the three giants that Steve had fought. "What the _hell_, Steve – "

"Killing is a last resort, and we don't – we don't kill somebody who's already down!"

"Christ, they deserve to die!" He was still shouting – why was he shouting? He hadn't let anybody get under his skin like this since – well, the only one still alive was Pepper, but there was Steve, standing there and demanding he just ignore what they'd been about to do, and all Tony could see was light glinting off of dirty water.

"That's not our call to make! We don't get to play judge, jury, _and_ executioner, that's how you forget justice and start on vengeance – "

"This isn't a courtroom, Steve, this is war!" Tony shouted. "This is an alien species wanting to take you apart for _fun_! This is us versus them, when they have all the toys, all the advantages, and we're – we're under siege! The war's never over, not for us, and it never will be so long as you just _let them go_, let them keep on coming back with new and better weapons, giving them second chances to fuck everything up again!"

His breathing was out of control – oh, great, and he had the boobs to go with it. A heaving bosom might have been on his list of things to experience (again) before dying, but not like that. Everything was out of control and this dress had boobs and no pockets, he wanted pockets, pockets to stuff his hands in so he wouldn't have to notice how they were shaking. He wanted out of this room.

"Is this still about the jǫtnar?" Steve asked him, and Tony didn't know how to reply.

There was the sound of pounding footsteps in the hall outside, and they both simultaneously broke off their staring match to look at the door. Tony brought his arm up, bracing it for a full-powered repulsor blast, because goddamnit, _screw _Cap and his over-the-top ideals. (In the back of his head, something dark and ugly whispered, _No wonder his version of you murdered him_. Tony ignored it.)

Thor burst through the doorway, his hammer raised high as he surveyed the room. At some point, he'd lost his veil and headdress, but the dress had stood up surprisingly well – or not-so-surprisingly, considering Asgardian fashion's other properties. "My friends!" he exclaimed, sounding pleased. "I feared you had encountered some difficulty, but it seems you have the matter well in hand." He walked forward, casually kicking Dofri in the head when the giant seemed to stir at his voice. The force of the blow caved in Dofri's head, but somehow Thor's shoes repelled any brain-matter that might have clung to them. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Steve's face darken.

"This isn't your world, Captain," Tony said, pitching his voice low and harsh.

Thor stopped in front of them and stared between them in confusion. "Is something else amiss?" he asked.

"_Yes_," Steve snapped.

"_No_, it's fine, it's just – it's fine," Tony said at the same time, staring Steve down until the other man breathed out a sigh that seemed to _decrease_ him somehow and covered his eyes with one hand. "We need your brother to whip up some clothes for the Captain so he doesn't freeze his bits off, though, and crush the dreams of the adult American population – and I think I'd like something other than a dress to wear if we're going to be trekking back, that'd be cool." Experimentally, he reached down the top of the dress and started fumbling with the fake boobs – what _were_ they made of, anyway, that they seemed so real? He came up with a sort of fitted gel cap that glowed faintly in the firelight.

"Of course," Thor nodded, before bellowing, "LOKI!" At a more normal volume, he went on cheerfully, "I am none too fond of this apparel myself!" swinging his hammer in a wide arc to emphasize his words. Which, to Tony, mostly emphasized the fact that oh, right, Thor had been drunk before all this again, and then he'd gone and drunk a few flagons while he was demolishing the rest of Thrym's feast. Standing within swinging distance of Mjolnir was probably a bad idea.

Green and gold light flickered, and Loki melted out of the shadows. He had already ditched his own dress – as well as his female form – and returned to a type of garb that was uncomfortably similar to what he'd been wearing when the Loki from Tony's universe had surrendered in Stuttgard: mostly leather, lots of green, but without the ridiculous helmet. He pursed his lips before waving a hand, and Tony squawked as the dress reformed around him, twisting and writhing like – well, okay, he'd _looked into_ tentacles, nothing more, it hadn't been much of a turn-on, not with – it was a_bad idea_, and this feeling definitely left him convinced that he'd been right to never give it a serious try. As his clothing settled into a copy of what he'd been wearing under the armor, he found himself patting his body down unconsciously, trying to reassure himself that none of _him_ had gotten changed. He looked up in time to catch Loki's smirk.

"Most unseemly, brother," Thor said with disapproval, but it vanished a moment later as he happily clapped an arm around Loki's shoulders – who didn't even stagger under the force of it, to Tony's disappointment. But then, even if Loki looked like a dweeb, Tony had seen first-hand the amount of punishment that he could take – sure, he'd get hit, but Tony wasn't really sure that he could actually be _killed_; he'd stood up to full-force repulsor blasts, the Destroyer weapon, and, JARVIS had reported, the Hulk in a _very bad mood_. He got _hurt_, but he just seemed to keep on going, like a demented version of the Energizer bunny crossed with a goat.

"Satisfied, Captain?" Loki drawled, and Tony looked over back at Steve. The flag had vanished, warping into something that looked similar to the uniform Rogers had been wearing, but – was that_chainmail?_ He looked closer. So it was. Well, that was Asgardian fashion for you.

Steve's face, though – he just looked... _tired_. Exhausted, really, so much that Tony almost felt bad for arguing with him earlier, except for how Steve had been a major prick. But then, Tony knew he could be a complete asshole when he was... less than optimal (if he had to admit it only to himself, he might go so far as to say it was a first line of defence), and Steve had been sent flying through worlds and times and then shown up again in time to almost get tortured, and _then_ had his naive idealism trampled all over. Okay, scratch that, Tony did feel bad. Steve was a soldier, but, Jesus, with that lost look on his face, Tony sort of wanted to make the rest of the big bad world go away and give him a hug. If he could encapsulate that look in an aerosol form, he would have world peace in a bottle. Hmm...

"Yeah, I'm fine," Steve said after a moment, dragging a hand over his eyes and scrubbing at his face. Tony walked over and slung an arm over his shoulders – which, hey, was possible, because Loki had actually _increased_ the height of his lifts a little bit. Excellent. He shot a half-smirk, half-thankful-smile at Loki, and then felt very weird doing so, with him standing there looking like _that_. At least he didn't have any sort of spear in his hands.

Well, he'd already made up his mind on that regard – albeit when Loki was dressed (and shaped) like an extremely hot woman, not like he had been when he'd killed – and Tony's mind wasn't going there, no, it was not. Tony sighed. "Right. Thanks. Let's go home, guys."

Thor led the way out, up the giant staircase (which Steve didn't carry him up piggy-backed, but then they weren't in a hurry, so it was fine; so what if he had to clamber awkwardly up the steps when the other three just easily leapt up them) and out through the hall – which was even more disgusting than it had been when they'd left. Now, instead of merely being littered with animal droppings, it was also littered with corpses, and Steve just looked... sad.

"Where did you go?" Tony asked him, casting about desperately for a topic as they picked their way past giant bodies. Most looked to have been crushed or tossed about by Mjolnir, but there were also a large number of them with sharper wounds and knives in their necks – as if Tony needed any reminder of Loki's lethality.

"I'm a soldier, Tony," Steve said, not taking his eyes off of the floor – which was probably wise; Tony stepped in something that _squished_ and winced, hurrying forward toward the door and the promise of clean air. "It was a war. It always is – if not the middle, then the aftermath. Or the preparation."

"You're not in a war right now," he replied, and damnit, he hadn't meant for his voice to sound that soft.

"Aren't I?"

_Shit_. "I didn't mean it like that," he protested half-heartedly. This was – this was emotional feely-stuff, Tony didn't _do_ this sort of thing, not for anybody but Pepper, and, well, Rhodey, that one time, but that had mostly consisted of getting Rhodey drunk. Which was not entirely off the table, at the moment – the Asgardians were sure to throw a party once they had Mjolnir back, weren't they? He rushed forward to ask Thor about just that, trying not to feel as though he were abandoning Steve.

Behind them, from the dead and lonely barn-cum-feasthall, a rooster crowed. Tony thought he heard a harp, too, oddly, but all he saw when he turned back was a large red rooster, much brighter than the one in Helheim had been – heh, another large red cock, he wondered if he could get Steve to say that again – but his smile died as he looked at Steve, trudging along, looking so... _sad_. The rooster crowed again, sounding far too cheerful for being surrounded by so much death, and then a third time, and then it was silent. What was a rooster doing here, anyway? Wasn't it too cold for things like roosters?

"And perhaps now that I have won it back, it will be mine in truth as well as in name," Thor was going on, sounding hopeful. "Father has until now proclaimed me yet unready, but surely after our victory here he will think otherwise!"

"Of course he will," Tony agreed, while Loki grunted, non-committal. "A mighty brawl, and all that."

"I owe you a great debt!" Thor said, swinging the hammer around. Tony dodged, belatedly remembering how he'd decided to stand _out of range_, and prudently moved back a ways. "For I am no lie-smith as skilled as my brother, and I think that indeed without the distractions provided by you and Steve, they would have seen through our deception ere they put the hammer in my hands."

"Glad to help," Tony said, although he had to wonder. In the myth they'd done okay, and Tony and Steve certainly hadn't been in that tale. That and Thor's blond hair, though, those were the only differences he'd picked up so far between this world and the myths. Maybe he should be focusing more on remembering what he'd read...

He caught a glimpse of Steve's set face and sighed inwardly. Or maybe he should just be focusing on a way to get home – and a way to get Steve back to his home. Getting tossed through the multiverse couldn't be good for anyone's state of mind.

* * *

The walk back took a lot longer than the trip out, but it was infinitely more dignified (although, since the trip out had had exactly zero dignity, literally anything would have been infinitely more dignified, because that was what you got when you attempted to divide by fucking zero). Standing around with a drunken Thor and a slightly tipsy Loki – who didn't really show it, until he was suddenly razzing on Thor as his brother yelled at the sky for Heimdallr to open the bifrost – well, that wasn't big on dignity either. Nor was getting snatched up and vomited back out by a rainbow for the third time that day.

And this time, their arrival had a (_very_) dignified audience. Well, that was cool. Tony had plenty of experience looking like an asshat in front of disapproving old men; since Nick Fury had decided to drop into his life, he even had practice doing so in front of disapproving one-eyed pirates, although on a second look he had to take that back, Odin was definitely not a pirate, he was rocking the Viking look _far_ too well to be associated with anything near the Caribbean. Well, Vikings had plundered and pillaged a lot like pirates, hadn't they?

"Thor," intoned another Very Disapproving Old Guy – well, Tony had to cut him a break. He wasn't actually sure if he was _old_, although the sheer gravitas that he managed to infuse Thor's name with definitely pointed to _ancient_ – but ancient in the 'leviathan from the deep', sense, not in the '102-year-old granny in a nursing home' way. He'd retrieved the sword that Loki had stuck into the bifrost machine to make it work (OSHA would have even more of a field day with these guys than they would with Tony's lab, and that was saying something) and had positioned it point down, his hands folded over the hilt. "Loki."

Did he actually have – ? Tony was pretty sure that there was something other than just (hah, 'just') gravitas going on with his voice, that was definitely a departure from a normal human or Asgardian voice box, because it was way too – it was making him want to stand up straight and look shamefaced, just like Steve was doing. Loki seemed to be looking for a convenient corner to disappear into, while Thor looked guilty for all of a half-second before he held Mjolnir up. But even then he didn't manage to make it look wholly triumphant, and if Tony had thought him rather like a large, shaggy dog when he'd first met him, then _this _Thor – drunk, obviously-a-bit-younger-than-Tony's-version-Thor – was much more like a puppy, paws too big for his body and enthusiasm too much for his wagging tail. A puppy that could, y'know, kill a barn full of frost giants, but hey, puppies could be lethal – especially to Persian rugs.

"Your trickery left this realm open to invasion, and that is not a crime that I can take lightly," the guy-with-the-sword intoned (_again_ with the intoning – did this guy speak in any other way?).

The butt of the spear that Odin All-Father was holding came down to rest lightly on the floor. The resultant ringing _thud_ made Tony's bones itch, and he had to resist the urge to clamp his hands over his ears – less so because the noise was _loud_, as because it felt like it was making his brain vibrate. He ground his teeth together and willed himself to ignore it.

"But in this case you have saved a precious artefact of Asgard from unworthy hands," Odin said mildly, "And much may be forgiven for that – if this never happens again. Heimdallr's task is far too important for him to be distracted by your pranks." His expression hadn't changed, but his eye had gone hard as flint as he glared at his two miscreant sons. "I will have your oath on this."

"You have it, father," Loki murmured immediately, at the same time as Thor said, "Yes, father."

"Thor, Loki, this day you have done several magnificent things – admittedly, some things which ought not be done," Odin chuckled, and wow, it was _just like_ when Fury chuckled, Tony was left wondering if the joke was that the eye-patch was about to eat him, "but also some deeds that will live on in legend. Well done, my sons." He sounded proud.

Tony was _not_ jealous. He was forty-something years old, he was not going to be jealous of anybody else's dad, especially not an alien dad who had raised – well, okay, Thor was decent, but Loki was a fucking psychopath, and that wasn't the point. He hadn't felt this way in years, why the hell was he feeling like this now, was this some Asgardian thing? He grimaced.

"I see you have brought guests," Odin turned to Tony and Steve, saying offhandedly, "Yes, Thor, you have proven yourself of age and worth enough to keep the hammer," when Thor opened his mouth. He shut it again promptly, looking pleased, while Loki rolled his eyes. "Be welcome in Asgard, Steven Rogers, for you have always been a man of great worth."

"Thank you, sir," Steve said politely, looking strangely touched. Huh. Was he getting dad-vibes too? Maybe it _was_ just an Asgardian thing, then – which meant that Tony was completely right to ignore it, not that he'd planned on doing otherwise.

"Anthony Edward Stark," Odin went on, turning to face Tony. For a brief moment, he looked... tired? Wary? Tony wasn't sure, but he felt his hackles rise, even as he wanted to joke, _"What, no welcome for me?"_ If he couldn't have that, then he'd claim as a prize being able to make the Asgardian king look guarded. Tony smiled, sharp and shark-like. It wasn't quite the same without sunglasses, but – he'd make do. Odin caught his eyes and stared back, not challenging – just mild. So mild. "You have aided my sons, and an ally of Asgard; be welcome here, for the nonce."

"Thanks," Tony said back, never dropping his smile. Shit, what the hell was _his_ problem?

What the hell was _Steve's_ problem, that he had no issues palling around with a doppelganger of the man who'd gotten him killed? No issues except their fundamentally different viewpoints on the necessity of lethal force. Maybe Odin was right to be wary. This was a universe full of deities, and somewhere, another Tony Stark had killed the American Dream.

He'd always thought he'd known what he was capable of. Then a group of terrorists had forced his head underwater and he'd drowned. Somewhere, another possible Tony had died from that drowning. Somewhere, another Tony had joined the Ten Rings of his own free will.

Somewhere, America was a fascist dictatorship and Steve Rogers fought for tyranny – or so the theory of infinite worlds would claim, but that seemed a lot more ridiculous.

"Come, my sons," Odin was saying, one arm going up to clasp Thor about the shoulder, the other to pull in Loki, the spear dropped back to the crook of his elbow. "You have reclaimed our lost treasure and proven yourselves worthy of adulthood. We shall feast this night! Your mother has been preparing all this while, busying herself so that she cannot fret; I feared she would overwork the cooks before your return."

"That would be most welcome," Thor said eagerly, which, seriously? "The giant's repast was greatly wanting." _Seriously?_

They strolled out of the chamber, dragging Loki along with them, although Tony noted that he didn't look unhappy that this was his fate. As they left Thor attempted to begin to regaling his father of the tale, and Odin hushed him, advising him to keep it until the dinner instead. Tony shook his head, letting the grin fade, and turned to see what had become of his armour – last he'd seen it, it had been piled in a corner, but those pieces definitely weren't there now.

"Heimdall, right?" Steve asked the last remaining Asgardian, who didn't look like he planned to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Heimdallr nodded regally, not taking his hands from the hilt of his sword or relaxing his stance as he calmly intoned, "I am." After a moment studying his face – and his strange, golden eyes – Tony decided that this wasn't personal: it was just the way the guy was, much like how Rhodey periodically got a stick up his ass. He tried to cast his mind over the myths that he'd read, but Heimdallr had never featured in them as more than a watcher. The reports from the New Mexico incident, though, had mentioned Thor yelling at the sky, as if he expected that _that_ Heimdallr – Heimdall? It had been Heimdall, in the reports – could see him. Had Thor been carrying Asgardian communication tech – or was that all on this guy? Tony could believe it, if it was.

"Modgud said that you might be able to help us," Steve continued after a moment. "We're... a long ways from home."

"And I'm without my armour," Tony put in, because it was definitely nowhere in the chamber and he hadn't activated the bracelets again, so it hadn't gotten up and moved on its own.

The interruption earned him the full attention of Heimdallr's stare. Tony met his gaze unflinchingly, drawing from reserves of arrogance to keep his chin up and his stance loose. If there was one thing that Tony knew how to do, it was how to best use his resources when they were limited. When unlimited... well, he could admit that he sometimes got a bit excessive.

Heimdallr wasn't looking _at_ him, though, so much as he was looking _through _him – Tony had to resist the urge to turn around and look behind him; he knew that wasn't what it was. No, it was like Tony was... the focus point? Quite possibly, he thought, because after a moment Heimdallr said, "Your armour was taken to guest chambers prepared for you. You may go there, if you wish."

And _that_ was the out. Tony smirked and didn't take it – the armour was important, the armour was _extremely_ important, but if it was being held up as bait to get them out of this chamber, or this conversation, then _this_ was even more important. "Nah, I'm good for now," he said carelessly, not looking at Steve – he could imagine the expression on the other man's face just fine.

Heimdallr didn't so much nod this time as rather 'incline' his head – which, seriously, this guy was sort of amazing. Tony had an urge to offer him a job, just standing outside of Stark Tower and being the most awesome doorman ever – but then, if he'd read the situation aright, that was basically Heimdallr's current job right _now_, except for an entire alien realm. Even Tony might have difficulty offering better benefits than King Odin of Asgard. "Do you work nine-to-five, or are you sort of always on duty, like a fireman?" he wondered aloud. Heimdallr just stared at him impassively.

"If you can help us get home... please," Steve asked, earnestly and sincerely, and somehow without managing to sound as if he was begging – something about all that noble dignity, perhaps. "There are people back home – they need us."

Did they? Tony short Steve a look of mild surprise. Well, he supposed that the rest of the Chitauri still had to be dealt with, but with the mothership blown to bits, the rest of the Avengers wouldn't have too much of a problem mopping up the stragglers – especially if the military finally showed up (okay, maybe they _did_ need him, to raise unholy hell about _that_ fuck-up – because he was damn good at raising hell, even if he said so himself. But there was also Fury – and Fury didn't need reinforcements, he was a one-man, one-eyed army all by himself). He wondered what Steve had been doing when the other Tony had killed him.

"Your path is already written," Heimdallr proclaimed after a moment of staring through Steve – and that made sense, Tony realized. Tracking software did much better when you could give it a starting point; why shouldn't alien software work the same way? It wasn't proof _for_ it, but the fact that human methods worked that way ruled out immediate proof _against_ it, until evidence was presented otherwise. "You will find your way home eventually, Steven Rogers. There are already those who look for your soul, wandering lost from your physical form. You have but to wait for them to find you."

Steve slumped, his head drooping, and Tony shot Heimdallr a glare. He'd only been around Steve for a day and he'd seen how much the jumping-between-realities thing was taking out of him. _I'm a soldier_, he'd said, _It was a war. It always is._ The unending threat of violence – against yourself or against others... Tony knew how exhausting that was, what it took out of you, bone and marrow.

"No one can see me," Steve said, starting in a mumble but making his words crisper as he went on. "Except for Tony – him," he gestured to Tony, "Not the others. Only the other people in this world, and this world isn't mine. How can my people find me if I don't exist to them?"

"Yeah, and why is that, anyway, that I can see him?" Tony asked.

Heimdallr's golden gaze shifted to him. "These Nine Realms sit at the center of all others," he explained, the words rolling out of his mouth and about the chamber, carrying enough import to make Tony's bones start itching again. "They are the nexus, the truest visions of reality. Our reflections in other realms are extensions of ourselves, while here lies the core. Our vision is passed on through this world, allowing mortals here to see as we do."

"World, realm, or reality?" Tony let his tone sharpen. "The Foster Theory holds that the Nine Realms are clustered within one of the higher dimensions, but Steve's from an alternate earth to mine – how far does that go?"

"As far as my sight. A realm may refer to any individual world created within the higher dimensions; we do not concern ourselves with the lower, for the distances soon prove too extreme. This realm is the center of the cluster within which we Aesir live. There may yet be universes that exist beyond this cluster, and thus beyond my gaze, but if so, they remain unknown to us."

"Oh," Tony breathed. Heimdallr and Steve both looked at him – Steve in confusion, Heimdallr with wariness, and wasn't _that_ awesome? "You guys exist across more dimensions that we do, consciously – no, hang on, then how come – right, no, of course. Thor said he'd not yet met us because he hadn't, not here, but he had elsewhere, but the elsewhere doesn't know – they're connected across other realities, while we aren't," he explained to Steve. "But the ones not from here, they're like – fingers, they don't know what the rest of the body is doing, where here is the brain, it can keep track of everything. But they're still all the same – the Thor from your universe, from my universe, from this universe, they're _all the same Thor_, and – what the hell, that means they're all the same _Loki_!" He whirled back to face Heimdall. "What are you doing, letting him run around like – what are you _doing?_"

"Your view is too simple," Heimdallr informed him. "Many things that have been written have not yet come to pass, and until such time as they do, we cannot pre-determine the truth of them. In too many cases have such prophecies been proven false." His eyes narrowed, the gold in them brightening. "Especially recently."

"Screw that, what about the things he's already done?" Tony snapped. "Or do you just not care – a thousand mortal lives here or there? Of an infinite number universes, how many do you want to bet he's a mass-murderer in?"

"He is in mine," Steve said, stepping up to Tony's side. Despite himself Tony found himself standing taller, the support making it somehow easier to face down a god with truth and argument, rather than simple, empty arrogance (not so empty: he made a pan-dimensional being nervous, that was _awesome_).

"The realms in which we reside are not infinite," Heimdallr stated. "And neither are we. If one aspect of us does ill, then it is that aspect that deserves punishment. Our selves are spread across many possibilities, and we are both all of these things and none. This is not a concept that mortals are made to understand."

"Shit," Tony muttered. _Shit_. Because the worst part of it was he could see where they were coming from, he could –just like he could see the counter-arguments, the ones that Steve was already opening his mouth to list, and they all paled before that realization, the fundamental knowledge of _we are not like you_. Could you hold an immortal to a mortal's standards – much less a pan-dimensional alien? Human beings could commit crimes so terrible, so horrific, that to be locked up the rest of their life was a pittance – but what if that life was extended ten-fold, a hundred, a thousand? People couldn't change, but immortals...

He had been the Merchant of Death, with so much blood on his hands, and now he swanned about in a billion-dollar suit, trying so desperately to make up for what he'd done and knowing that in his lifetime he'd never be able to – but what if he wasn't limited to his lifetime? Given an eternity, or enough realities to approximate it, when could it be said, enough, they've paid for their crimes, we're done? If you decided it was _never_, didn't that just mean _nothing you do from now on matters at all_?

But none of that mattered when all he thought about Dr. Shäfer with his eye torn out. Bodies in the streets of Manhattan, gunned down by the Chitauri. A bloodstain on a metal wall.

And trying to say that in the face of the overwhelming _otherness_ of a pan-dimensional alien would be as futile as trying to argue with an internet troll.

"That's not – " Steve had started to say, but Tony jumped in and started talking over top of him.

"Steve, let it go," he said, and earned himself a cold glare for it. "No, let it go, this isn't the time, or the place, this isn't – this isn't our universe, our world, and hey, he just said I oversimplified so maybe it's completely wrong, like Newton's Laws, I mean, you'd never apply those to inter-planetary travel, they just become wrong no matter how much they work for civil engineers – "

"This isn't about – "

" – but it is, okay? We can't – please, not right now," he muttered, eyeing Heimdallr. Not without his armour, not without – maybe not ever.

Maybe he didn't want to know the answer.

"Tony," Steve sighed, and he sounded so _tired_ again, that Tony couldn't look at him. But after a moment of silence, he sighed again and asked Heimdallr, "What about him?"

He'd tilted his head toward Tony – always looking out for his troops, Tony supposed. But Heimdallr shook his head. "I cannot see the world from which you fell, Stark, and while there are ways to hide from even my sight, there are none which would obscure an entire realm. Nor do I know of any method of travel that would take you such a distance as to be from a place beyond my gaze. There are few enough ways that mortals may travel even limited distances between realms and survive."

Tony felt his mouth twist, open to say something bitter – and shut it again. Great. Why was every Asgardian he met completely useless? What did these people have against him? Obviously Heimdallr was _wrong_, clearly he'd missed out, either on a method of travel or on an entire alternate universe – Tony wasn't even going to think of the headache if he was right. That way lay crazy-land, and thinking he wasn't who he really was, when he'd made himself every step of the way and had the arc reactor to prove it.

If he wasn't...

Heimdallr was a pan-dimensional being. Wouldn't he know?

"You said there were guest quarters?" Steve directed the question at Heimdallr, but he was looking at Tony in concern. Carefully, Tony schooled his expression to neutrality, wondering what he'd given away.

Heimdallr nodded and tilted his head toward the door.

"Right. I want to ask more about this," Steve said in a tone that would brook no opposition – but Heimdallr didn't say anything, just stood there and kept looking impassive.

Tony nearly jumped as Steve placed one hand on his arm. He _did_ flinch, unable to entirely control the reaction, not with worlds and possibilities and guilt spiraling out in his head, equations and estimations and body-counts more real in his mind than anything his eyes could see. But Steve didn't pull back, just guided him gently away, pushing one of the massive gold doors open and leading him out into Asgard.

And _oh_. That was a sight.

Stars swirled above and below them, reflected in a sea that dropped off of the edge of the world, water falling down, _down_, into infinity. The bridge on which they stood was translucent, with muted rainbows running through it in pulses – it probably glowed brighter when the bifrost was in use, Tony speculated, when the big rainbow needed power from all the little ones. It led into a gleaming city in the distance, golden towers rising like the pipes of the universe's biggest organ, the mountains and stars overhead comprising the cathedral. It was spectacular – Tony felt his mind scrabbling for _how, how, how_, how was he breathing when he could see the stars so directly like that, what was keeping them pulled down to the bridge, what was the bridge made of, how was it supported, how large was the city –

"This is even more impressive than Asgard back home," Steve commented. Even he had been knocked out of his grim and important thoughts by the beauty of the world before them.

Tony hummed, drinking it in. "Can't say I've been."

There were no guards – there was no one around at all, not even to point the way – but it wasn't like they needed any; there was only one way for them to go, and not exactly anything for them to break on the way there. The bridge had no handrails, so Tony went right up to the edge and looked off of it, examining the stars. They seemed... off; brighter, perhaps, than he was used to from earth, although not as bright as they were from orbit, which made sense if he assumed that there _was_ an atmosphere and that he and Steve were, in fact, not currently suffocating to death. They weren't _wrong_ in the way the Chitauri's stars had been, but nor were they as glorious and brilliant as the stars about Yggdrasil. They were... well, they were stars, and the occasional nebula. He filed away the images in his brain, to cross-reference astronomical databases with when (_if_) he got back (_to where?_), and then went back to Steve, who was still looking his fill off of the other side of the bridge.

"I didn't mean to dump all that on you back there," Tony said after a minute of silence, which was not awkward only by virtue of the very strange and pretty scenery.

"It's fine," Steve said, but he looked sad again, and it made Tony's insides feel all knotted up.

"It's not fine. It – you're right, Steve. There's a line. But some people – there are people out there that are so horrible that no one but us is going to get the chance to judge them, and to get _rid_ of them, to prevent them from destroying other people. And if we can't stop them..." Tony closed his eyes. "I don't know where the line is, sometimes. Sometimes I just have to _guess_. I'm sorry. I'm not – " he clicked his teeth closed before he could say, _I'm not you._

Because sure, Captain Righteous was a pain in the ass – even if Steve, older, wiser, and with a sense of humour had grown on him – but nobody could deny that he was. Well. _Righteous_. The type of man who would show mercy to an alien who'd been about to torture him.

"I don't know either," Steve said. "I thought I did once. And then I nearly killed my best friend." Tony opened his eyes and glanced over to see that Steve had bowed his head. What? Best friend? That had been Bucky Barnes, right? Or was Steve talking about somebody that he'd met after the ice? He couldn't mean... "I got so caught up in defending the line that I couldn't see all the people I was hurting. But when I finally got it – when I gave up..."

_Gave up?_ Tony found himself mouthing the words, because if there was anything that Steve Rogers did _not_ do, it was give up. He'd seen the interview transcripts – the records of fights he'd gone into, long before the serum (fights he'd lost); fights he'd gone into since. His picture was in the dictionary under 'stubborn', no redirect needed.

But – that wasn't entirely true. Steve – _this_ Steve – he'd given up. He'd given up three times now, if Tony counted – three times when someone (_Tony_) had gone head-to-head with him and tried to overrule him, and he'd _let_ it happen. Dofri's death, and Loki's state... and now this, right before. All... all involving him. Shit. What had he _done_?

"But everything seems worse now," Steve concluded quietly, and he looked so _exhausted_. "And this new information about Loki... you're right. We can't hope to contain him, if the Asgardians here aren't even willing to consider it."

Tony reached out tentatively, but turned the near-hug into an awkward pat on the shoulder before he could actually complete it. Steve looked like he could use a hug, but – right, maybe affection from Tony wasn't the best thing for Steve, given the apparent results. "When's the last time you slept?" he asked instead, voice more abrupt than usual to cover his hesitation.

Steve looked up and blinked at him. "What?"

"Sleep, Cap – not just for the weak, also for the tired, assuming they're lacking coffee, which has been in heartbreakingly short supply. When?"

Steve shook his head. "I don't know. I don't get tired, or hungry." His lips quirked at whatever he saw on Tony's face (in his mind's eye, Tony did a quick check and came up with a mild mix of shock and horror – well, shit. He schooled it away, but obviously it was too late _now_). "I still have a pulse. I still feel alive. But I'm not." He looked back down at the stars below.

The question hovered on Tony's lips. He nearly swallowed it back, but – damn it, he'd never been any good at keeping himself from asking questions, even when he wasn't certain that he wanted to know the answer – _especially _when he wasn't certain that he wanted to know the answer. "What do you see? When you're not... here."

"Different stuff," Steve said slowly. "Other – other ways things could have gone. Battles I fought in... ones that I didn't. Things I could have prevented. I've seen you – my you, I mean. Other you's, sometimes. My you... he's not doing well." He shook his head. "None of them are. Everything I see falls apart in the end. I'm sort of waiting for Ragnarok to start here."

Tony tipped his head to the side and took a careful step back from the edge. "It's just a story, Steve."

"I thought you said this was all happening according to your myths?"

"Not all of it," he shrugged, blithely stuffing away the part of him (the greater part) that wanted to agree in the back of his head. The exact truth wasn't what Steve needed to hear right now. "Pretty sure you and I weren't in any of them, but look at us, here we are. And if we're going on stories, well, you do know they call this place the _Realm Eternal_, right? So let's go... be good guests, relax, drink lots of mead. Take a break." Horribly, he felt his voice go all gentle again. "We earned it." _You earned it_.

When Steve stepped into stride with him, it felt like a sort of victory.

* * *

On foot, it took a ridiculous amount of time to reach the city proper; Tony would have wondered why the bifrost machine needed to be so far away, but he'd seen the way it was situated out on the edge of the world. The question answered itself. A quartet of guards stood at the end of the bridge, as emotionless as the fabled guards of Buckingham Palace, and with hats that could give the queen's finest a run for their money. One of their number was dispatched to show Tony and Steve to side-by-side rooms that, Tony had to admit, dwarfed even the quarters of his Malibu mansion. He instantly began designing some renovations in his head – he'd learned a lot about architecture and interior design in the past year, and, well, gold _was_ one of his colours. It would be fitting to do the entire place in it, right? Pepper had claimed it would look tacky, but Asgard certainly pulled it off well.

He skipped up the stairs into the suite, leaving his guard to close the door behind him. Two couches were arranged in front of an enormous fireplace that burned merrily, packed with cushions stuffed to _just _the right degree, singing a siren song of _Come, lie down, rest_. For a moment he stared longingly at them, but – no. Priorities. Armour first.

The armour stood out nearly anywhere Tony went – but then, Asgard wasn't just anywhere. Whoever had moved it here had propped it up on a frame in the corner, leaving the disassembled pieces just stacked neatly instead of putting them back into any sort of order – but the glowing blue beacon at the heart of it was lit up again, and Tony let himself cheer (what? There was nobody around – and even if there were watchers, well, screw them). He picked up the helmet immediately and put it on, hit the override and watched the HUD come to life from a full reboot.

_"Sir,"_ JARVIS greeted him, a note of polite confusion in his voice, and Tony felt like he was twenty-one and a brilliant new father all over again, bringing the world's first human-level (oh, who was he kidding, JARVIS was way beyond most humans) AI to life.

"Full diagnostics, JARVIS, I want to know if anything's missing that wasn't already damaged," he ordered, still grinning. "Wow, good to have you back."

_"I am happy to be back,"_ JARVIS said, still sounding a bit confused. Poor kid, he hadn't been offline like that since – well, ever. Tony had made some tweaks to his code in the first few weeks after onlining him – after that, JARVIS learned how to take care of himself – but even then he'd never turned JARVIS 'off'. Turning him offline would have been like, well, a doctor knocking out their patient before giving them a checkup. It just wasn't on. _"Sir, where are we?"_

"Asgard – of a completely different reality. When I get back I think I'll have to take another look at string theory and make a bunch of physicists cry," he said exultantly. "We're good for now, but we may have watchers – I dunno, they're nice but don't seem too keen on me. Wonder why – everybody likes me!" He threw out his arms and twirled in place, not even caring at the way his left arm protested the movement.

_"Indeed,"_ said JARVIS, and that, _there_ was the dry tone that let Tony know that JARVIS was peachy-okay. _"Initiating full diagnostics."_

He kept the helmet on, keeping an eye on the diagrams and numbers that JARVIS provided as he started reassembling everything, especially the gauntlet that he'd taken apart. In return, he gave JARVIS a run-down on what he'd missed, skimping on the details that would make him worry too much. The armour still had damage from the battle, of course – but nothing much that he could repair without welding gear. When they were done it all fit back together in its nice roll-y-case, though, and Tony took off the helmet and let it slot into place as JARVIS gave him the final damage run-down. Nothing seemed to be missing that hadn't been knocked out of place back in Manhattan.

"Keep an eye out, JARVIS, I'm gonna check out the rest of the room," Tony ordered, and let JARVIS's indignant, _"Of course, sir,"_ put a bit of skip in his step as he explored the rest of the main room. There was a bathroom – he thought it was a bathroom, but wasn't sure; maybe he should hold off on confirming that – off to one side, but the main room, although extremely large, didn't seem to hold much else other than the sunken firepit and those lovely, enticing couches.

He let himself sprawl across one, groaning in pleasure as the cushions molded to his body, letting muscles that he had forgotten were hurting relax. When the sound of running water interrupted his consciousness, he barely even registered it until it went on long enough to call attention to another very mortal need. Then he dug himself out of the couch – not without sending it longing glances all the while – and went back to give the bathroom a second look.

It was aptly named. An enormous hollow set into the floor turned out to be a tub – really, 'jacuzzi' was probably a better word for it than 'tub' – possibly he should be going with 'pool'. Steam gently wafted from its surface, over which a last few ripples played as it finished filling from a giant golden spout; there didn't seem to be any temperature controls. Golden seats, molded for form, extended down under the water, and he imagined leaning into them and letting the water soothe away his hurts.

Yeah, right.

"Great," he mumbled. There was no sign of a shower anywhere.

The tub felt more like a pointed suggestion than a courtesy, though. Tony thought it over as made use of what he very much hoped was the toilet – was that there just for mortals? Or was it not actually a toilet, and he had just committed some terrible faux pas? Did gods need toilets? Well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd pissed where he shouldn't have. Rather alarmingly, there was no sink to wash his hands at, although he did locate towels. Well, he could do this. He could – sponge bathe, or something. He'd done it before, sponged down before a sink rather than navigate the shower with injuries.

Gingerly, he picked up the soap and a towel and knelt by the edge of the steaming tub. If he leaned forward enough then he could see his reflection in it, before he disrupted it by dipping in the towel –

- water swirled about him, he couldn't see. He couldn't breathe. There were people behind him, holding his hands, his hands were tied – the water was cold, so damn cold, it felt like it was freezing on his face and he started to inhale by reflex, water rushing up his nose and into his mouth, dirty and disgusting. He coughed, expelling the last dregs of air in his lungs as his body fought against drowning, and then he was out of oxygen and nearly inhaled again. They were trying to break him – he knew they wouldn't let him drown, they wouldn't let him drown because they needed him, so he just had to hold out long enough and they'd pull him out. They'd pull him out. He had to – he needed air, and they weren't pulling him out, but they would, they would, they had to, please, they needed him – _air, air, air –_

- _"Sir, you are alright, I am in the next room. There is no one else here except us. We are in Asgard, and you were attempting to bathe. We are both fine, and no one else is present. I am in the next room – "_

JARVIS's voice, overriding the speaker system to project loudly enough, brought him back to himself. He was huddled on the floor, hands over his head as he gasped for breath. The tiling was golden, as was the roof. The light was good. There was no water in sight, although he knew that the tub was still behind him, but he wasn't thinking about that. He wasn't.

Something caught in his throat; he was still breathing too fast, and he started coughing, hard enough that spots danced before his vision. _Air, air, air_, his brain chanted – _just like before_ – but this time when his body tried to breathe in again he got air, not water. Air.

Tony let his head rest against the tiles and muttered a quiet but heartfelt, "_Fuck_."

_"Are you present again, sir?"_ JARVIS interrupted his soothing monologue to ask.

"Yeah – I'm. Fuck. I'm here. Fuck," he muttered again to the floor.

_"Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to return to the main room,"_ JARVIS ventured after a minute or two. Or it could have been an hour. Who knew? Well, JARVIS probably did.

"No," he breathed out. "I mean – just, give me a moment."

After a while – he didn't know how long – after his heartbeat had ceased pounding in his ears, and his breathing had stopped rasping, and his cheek had grown cold from the tile, he shut his eyes and hauled himself back up to sitting position. He kept his eyes closed as he groped his hand, with the towel, over the side of the tub, and let it dip into the hot water. It was just a sink – a small sink. Like the one in his bathroom, which was flat and had extra drains so that water never, ever built up – except there was definitely water there. Okay, like a hotel sink, which he could use without his hands shaking so long as he kept his eyes closed. This was just like that.

He managed to wash his hands and face before his willpower ran out, arrogance shrivelling up against this foe that he'd not been able to beat since Afghanistan, no matter how hard he tried. Growling, he tossed the towel and soap away and climbed to his feet, determinedly staring straight ahead and never at anything behind him, even though it made the back of his neck crawl. "JARVIS, sitrep," he snapped. The need to look around was so bad that he almost tripped on the stairs leading up from the washroom back into the main room.

_"We are presently in Asgard, in guest quarters set aside for your use. No one else is currently present, and no one has entered or exited these rooms since you reactivated me. The armour is functional despite damage from the prior battle, which is largely un-repairable without the Malibu or Tower facilities..."_

JARVIS's voice helped, but it once Tony was back at the couches he let himself collapse again, cursing mentally. Fuck. Fuck Asgard and fuck their lack of showers. Fuck his own fucking weakness, having a breakdown when Odin One-Eye could probably see everything. Fuck him – Tony wouldn't put it past him to have set this up on purpose. Just – fuck. He wanted to climb into the armour so badly, but he'd been trying to stop using it as a crutch for this. It was far too dangerous to go around wearing a tank while having a PTSD episode.

Where was Steve? Tony had never been able – he'd never, ever wanted Pepper to see him like this, had never even wanted to be in the same room as her when he'd gotten like this, because she – she put up with so much of his shit, she didn't deserve that. But Steve was all about protecting the weak, or whatever that was, and he – he'd been through a war, he'd understand the symptoms of PTSD. Not that Pepper wouldn't, but she'd know in the same way that Tony had known. Before.

Fuck. This was not Afghanistan – he was further from Afghanistan than he'd even been, literally – well, depending on which dimensions counted as contributing to distance. This was Asgard – _the_Asgard, the one where all the brains of a bunch of pan-dimensional aliens were stored. He had to pull himself together.

A sharp knock at the door nearly sent him to pieces again. Tony flinched off of the couch, by accident, but managed – albeit not so gracefully – to turn it into a roll to his feet. He wanted his armour, damn it, screw being responsible, he should have just climbed right in. Shit. But the door creaked open – JARVIS's voice cut off immediately – and it was just Steve. Steve, wearing different clothes (a bit more Asgardian in style; Steve, however, had the physique to pull it off) and a hunted look.

"Tony!" he exclaimed, shutting the door carefully behind him and then bounding closer with long strides. "Oh thank god."

"What's up, Cap?" Tony asked, forcing his hands down. At some point he'd raised his hands, like his boxing skills would do any good against an Asgardian. Trying for casual, he stuck them in his pockets.

"How long have you been here?" Steve asked instead of answering. There was a demanding note of real _fear_ there.

"Uh – " Tony's mind blanked. Shit. How long had he been here? He never had any idea of how long panic attacks lasted; usually he just came back to himself in his workshop and JARVIS told him – or he could estimate by how much new stuff he'd invented during the blackout. Without external cues – he glanced at the fireplace, but it looked exactly the same as when he'd entered. Did that mean it had only been a few minutes, or was the fire more alien tech? "An hour?" he guessed weakly.

"Time is weird in this place," Steve said, moving up to stand beside him. Something in Tony relaxed, slightly – he had _Captain America_ right beside him. He was safe – or, well, safer, at least. "It's been a couple of hours, for me, though I blinked out once, but when I left my room..." he gestured back toward the door. "Things had changed. I ran into Thor, and he was _older_, but he told me that the feast is still scheduled for tonight. I saw something that looked like a clock, though, and it hadn't moved at all. It feels like a funhouse version of the Asgard I know."

"Pan-dimensional aliens," Tony reminded him. "Time could be... pretty wonky, how they view it."

"We should stick together," Steve declared with a frown. "I don't want to – if we get separated, we might not be able to find each other again. It took me long enough to find you this time."

"Sounds smart," Tony agreed. "I guess I should put the armour back on, too." He was proud of how casually he managed to say that – as if he wasn't feeling a rush of relief at having the barest excuse.

"Yeah, I don't think they'll mind – armour seems to be regular clothing around here," Steve said, taking a look at the assembly in the corner. "Hey, they repowered it for you." He sounded relieved by that.

"Yeah, it's still got battle damage, but it'll do," Tony said, pulling out a grin as he walked toward it. There were a few bits that were damaged too badly to auto-assemble; no point making the thing fly around when it couldn't show off properly.

"It's... really big," Steve said, staring at it. "I mean, I knew it was bulkier, but... this is a lot."

"Your me has a slimmer version?" Tony asked as he turned his back to it and held out his arms. JARVIS didn't need a verbal order to start assembling it around him, and it was with some relief that he felt it latch on.

"The most recent versions, yeah," Steve shrugged. "And he – well, anyway," he broke off awkwardly, and Tony wondered what he'd been about to say. "He used to have to cart it around in a van."

"I have a version that folds down into a suitcase," Tony offered, "But it's got a lot of other things stripped out. Has to, to get it that small – and the protection's a lot more iffy. I can make materials engineers cry in awe, but at the end of the day thicker plating still matters."

Steve shook his head and said with a small smile, "Your armour's pretty incredible no matter the world."

Tony felt himself preen as the helmet locked into place, and then he had to spend a few moments manually setting the right leg and the lower right torso into alignment so that it could properly lock. When it was all in place, he had JARVIS do a quick check that systems were working at the maximum that they could manage – about 91% of optimum, which was okay; he wouldn't start running into serious problems flying until he lost at least 20% of them, and even then that was only if the 20% most critical went first. Then he took off the helmet and tucked it under his arm.

"Well, I'm ready," Tony said. His eyes caught on Steve's empty hands, and he grimaced sympathetically. "No luck getting them to conjure a shield for you?"

"I didn't ask." Steve shook his head. "It wouldn't be the same. Come on."


	3. Ragnarøkkr

Walking around in the armour was _much_ more fun when it was fully-powered. He'd spent hundreds of hours getting the user interface perfected – since the entire thing was basically one big user interface – so that it not only detected his movements perfectly, but also anticipated them based on the electrical signals in his muscles: there was no delay from when he swung his arm to when the armour did. It had taken him even more hours of practice to become fully comfortable with all the add-ons he'd built in starting with the Mark II – but it had been a lot of _fun_ practice. Wearing the suit was almost like getting add-ons directly wired into his brain. Although, when under-caffeinated and de-suited, he did now occasionally find himself trying to open systems that he actually wasn't wearing, muscles flexing in patterns that meant nothing without the suit's ability to understand them.

Eventually, he'd get it to the point where it could just read his brain, but he quite wasn't there. Yet.

His body still ached – nothing to be done about that except wait for it to pass, given the absence of painkillers (probably for the best, in this company) – but in the suit, that didn't matter. Even if he was hurting – the suit let him compensate. The suit let him be _more_.

The guard standing watch outside his room was still taller than him, even in the suit – but to be fair, the guy had a completely ridiculous helmet (or rather, a helmet that would have been completely ridiculous anywhere other than Asgard; here it just blended into the general decor) that added at least a quarter of a metre to his height. It was marginally better than Loki's Christmas Apparel, at least, as it did not have any horns.

"I'll show them the way. You're dismissed," said a smooth voice from behind them, before they could ask for directions, and Tony absolutely did _not_ jump. He turned to see Loki – yes, in full ceremonial armour, horns and all – walk up and clasp his hands together, smiling winningly. The guard bowed and left.

"Loki," Steve said, his voice admirably controlled. Tony just hummed, more interested in the confirmation of Steve's experience – Loki definitely wasn't a teenager anymore. In his ceremonial garb, he was an exact doppelganger of the Loki that had attacked Manhattan.

"Please, walk with me," Loki invited. Steve stepped up immediately, putting himself between Loki and Tony – who felt obliged to roll his eyes as he put the helmet back on. He'd thought carrying it would be better, but if he was walking alongside _Loki_, no fucking way. In full armour – even damaged as it was – he had a way better chance of surviving any trick that Loki might pull than Steve did, but he could see that Steve was going to be stubborn about it and there was no point in fighting about it while the Trickster looked on and laughed.

Asgardians in their path hurried to get out of their way – or rather, out of the way of one of Asgard's princes – but they never looked at the three of them. Hmm. So Loki wasn't exactly popular – that fit with all of the legends.

"I was interested in inquiring into your troubles," Loki said after a pause. His tone was mild, velvety almost – not harmless, but definitely benign. Tony wondered how much of it was an act – did Loki ever lie to himself? Thor had thought that he did, in his madness – but what about this version? Was this version completely crazy, too, or only partly insane? "Heimdallr's vision is superb, but even he has his – blind spots, and the arrogance to deny them." He smiled again, this time ruefully. "Arrogance is a common fault among we Aesir, unfortunately."

"Yeah-huh," Tony said. "So, what, you think _you're_ gonna help either of us?" He raised an eyebrow, even though Loki wouldn't be able to see it through the faceplate – conveying body language while in the armour had a lot to do with the general _feel_. "Heimdall told us about the whole 'aliens from the fifth dimension' thing. You're gonna offer to help us with your right hand while your left hand plots how to stab us in the back?"

"From the fifth dimension?" Loki looked baffled. "How could one be from a dimension?"

Tony and Steve exchanged glances. "It's an Earth saying," Steve interpreted.

"Really," Loki said, bemused. "How strange. Regardless, your metaphor is unequal to the task of explaining the true situation. Think, rather than of a human body, of an Aspen forest – a colony of trees all sprung from the same root system, all technically part of one living organism, but still, they grow, and may be chopped down, individually."

"And we're – what, pine trees?" Tony threw out the first type of forest-y tree that came to mind. He didn't really spend a lot of time around trees. Well, there were palm trees, but those didn't grow in forests, did they?

"Just so." Loki looked pleased that he'd made the jump.

"Great. One problem, though – Heimdall was pretty clear about this being the super-special centre of the universe. So what does this make you – this you?" He poked a finger in Loki's direction, only to have Steve bat it down. Tony rolled his eyes again, but went on. "The root system?"

Loki shook his head. "A better explanation would be that the versions of us that dwell here are the first trees – the ones from which spawn all others."

It sounded credible. Plausible.

It completely contradicted what Heimdallr had said about this Loki being the 'brain' of all the others – about him being all, and none. Tony really didn't have any idea what the hell that was supposed to mean, but it did _not _mean that Loki was just another tree.

"Right. Sure. Okay, so this version of you just happens to be nice, and wants to help us from the goodness of its – your – heart," Tony said.

"Tony," Steve remonstrated him mildly, but when Tony took his eyes off of Loki's expression long enough to check Steve's, he saw that Steve was wearing a flat, stubborn look. Yeah, Steve was on Tony's side, no doubt about it – he'd caught Heimdallr's speech, too, after all.

"It was my daughter that alerted me to your presence within these realms," Loki said, and Tony's eyes narrowed at the abrupt right turn in conversational topics. Loki's voice softened, and he looked away. "We exchange messages infrequently. It has been a long time since she has been able to step foot outside her realm, or I within it – a long time since I have seen her face, seen how she has grown." He looked back, meeting first Steve's gaze, and then Tony's. "Tell me of her, and I will consider your news fair payment for my aid in returning you home."

It sounded – well, shit, Loki made it sound legit. He'd sounded just as legit as when he'd firmly denied knowing anything about Steve to Þrymr's face. The question wasn't whether Loki _could_ like about something like this – because the guy's epithet wasn't Lie-Smith for nothing – it was about whether he _would_, in this very specific instance. So – assume that he was lying about his motivations. He'd asked about aiding them. What did he get from helping them get home?

The sounds of merry feast-goers were growing steadily louder as they continued to walk, echoing off of all the grand, arcing metal walls and ceilings. Tony mulled it over. A way to make them disappear – maybe permanently? If he'd wanted that, surely he could accomplish the same thing in a less round-about manner. Although, this was _Loki_ – bag full of cats. Straightforward wasn't his style.

"I never met your daughter," Steve said. "Sorry."

Loki frowned. "I had thought otherwise, from her description... how did you come to be in her realm?" There was the faintest note of confusion in his question. Tony didn't trust it.

They turned a corner and emerged onto the edge of an open-aired feast-hall – or perhaps the term 'courtyard' would have been more appropriate, really. A dozen enormous tables, stacked high with platters, were surrounded by Asgardian men and women, in finery ranging from elaborate full plate armour (which looked like it shouldn't have withstood one good blow, but it was of Asgardian make, so it could probably take a smack from Thor's hammer and only be a bit dented) to a floor-length gown that was apparently made up of diamonds, and not a lot else. Tony squinted; the effect was a lot like wearing a dress made of glittery fishnet. The lady had the assets to pull it off well, though. There were guards standing about the edges of the hall, but there seemed to be no servants helping with the meal, although obviously someone had to have set it up; rather, when somebody wanted something, they called out raucously and were obliged by their tablemates lifting up a platter of whatever-it-was and passing it down. Some people had abandoned the tables altogether, and remained standing as they ate, clustered among the large – albeit not for Asgard – golden statues that were interspersed between the tables like signposts.

The table that they stood closest to was smaller than the rest, and raised up on a dais, although it was no less overflowing than any of the others. Odin and Frigga – at least, Tony assumed that the woman was Frigga – sat behind the table upon ornate thrones, their heads bowed together as they spoke in such low voices that, over all of the hubbub, even the armour's sensors had no chance at picking out what they were saying. Thor knelt near his mother's chair, listening intently, before breaking out into a smile and standing to jog off of the dais and over to one of the other tables. Like Steve had said, he was definitely older – his beard was, well, an actual beard, in the same style that the Thor from Tony's universe had sported.

"I've been slipping through universes for a while," Steve said. The look in his eye made it clear he didn't trust Loki – Tony approved – but he wasn't sure that Steve's tactic of going along with the villain for now was the best idea. What did Loki stand to gain? "It was just the latest stop."

"An unfortunate state of affairs," Loki murmured, too low to be heard above the din without the armour's sensors – or superhuman hearing. He paused at the steps leading down into the courtyard. "May I beg of news from you, then, Mr. Stark, or do you likewise have none for me?"

Time to make a decision. The lack of pursuit about Steve's situation... maybe wondering what Loki got from helping them get home was the wrong idea – maybe he should be wondering what Loki_really_ wanted to know about Hel. "Yeah, I met her," Tony shrugged.

"How did she look?" There was genuine concern in his eyes – a parent's worry for a child. Tony had never seen a look like that from his father – occasionally he'd gotten it from his mother, or from Jarvis, their old butler. After both Jarvis and his parents were gone, he'd seen it from Obidiah – a lot. He'd never know if even then it had been a lie, or if Obie had only become twisted later.

Tony smiled crookedly and let his body language convey the same sentiment. "I think she was bored." It was as good a guess as any – he had no idea what Hel had been thinking throughout their conversation. If Loki had something to gain from details – well, Tony didn't have any to give him.

Loki breathed out, disappointed and – relieved? If this _was_ an act, he was the finest actor Tony had ever seen. Or was he just going to the old standby of mixing in truths with his lies?

"Helheim is not a cheering place," Loki said. "That she longs for other pursuits is not unknown to me, but as her father, I fear the toll that her realm's perpetual gloom may take upon her spirit. That she merely longs for – "

He broke off as Thor's voice rang out, loud enough to briefly quiet the hubbub, "Brother! And Steven and Anthony! You have arrived, at long last – I had feared the feast would go on for half the night without you!" Thor bounced – seriously, _overgrown puppy_ – his way toward them, trailed by an entourage of other battle-garbed Asgardians carrying tall mugs of some frothy, golden, no-doubt-extremely-alcoholic beverage. "Come, sit with us!"

He urged them over to a table, but Loki smiled and declined, "I must pay my respects to our mother and father," before veering off toward the dais.

Tony watched him go with narrowed eyes, but all his attention was soon taken up by Thor, who slung an arm around his shoulders and urged him, "My friend, doff your helmet – we are all friends here, and with it obscuring your face you cannot partake of the mead!" He led them over to chairs, good-humouredly shoving away one enormous man – Volstagg, the New Mexico reports had called him – from the seat at Thor's left, clapping the back of it and urging Tony to, "Sit, and be merry! This is a time of celebration!"

Tony shrugged and flipped the faceplate up. Before another spot could be found for him, Steve claimed the next chair over – which was good thinking. They shouldn't get split up. Thor called for platters to be passed, and a moment later they had plates in front of them filled high with food, making Tony's mouth water so badly that he reached for the nearest flagon and took a long draught without thinking. It tasted like nothing he'd ever drunk before – like liquid gold, cherry-red from the forge, the metallic tang tempered by a honeyed sweetness. His eyes widened and he took another gulp.

"Tony," Steve said to him in a low voice. He sounded urgently concerned. "That's – are you sure you should be drinking that?"

Tony raised an eyebrow at him. "Loosen up, Cap – it's a party!" Okay, so maybe he should take it a bit slower – he could feel the alcohol hitting his system already. What percentage _was_ this stuff – or was it ethanol at all? Screw it, he was starving, he'd gamble on his hosts knowing how not to poison the lowly mortals. He took a third swig of the mead – or whatever it was – and put the flagon down so he could tuck into the slab of meat – it looked like some kind of pork – that somebody had put on his plate.

It tasted, all puns intended, _divine_.

"This is definitely alcoholic," Steve said, picking up the flagon that Tony had been drinking from and inspecting it.

"No shit," Tony rolled his eyes, grabbing it back and washing down a mouthful of pork. "Might even be able to get you drunk, Mr. Super Soldier." He resolved to treat the stuff like shots – which... probably meant he'd had too much too quickly already, but he'd do his best to limit his intake from here on in.

Steve looked confused, but a bit relieved – what the hell was that about? "I can get drunk," he said, picking up his utensils and finally digging into his own plate. He paused after one bite, and Tony smirked at the look on his face – knowing that he'd been wearing the same look not a moment before. Food of the gods was heady stuff, especially when you were really freaking hungry.

To his right, Thor began a loud and versified recounting of their trip to Jǫtunheimr, drawing roars of laughter from the crowd. The sky grew darker as he went on, until small globes of golden fire bloomed overhead, like floating lanterns. Tony squinted at them; they were a bit fuzzy. How much mead had he had to drink? He checked his flagon discreetly, but somebody had filled it up to the brim again. Damn. He shook his head and pushed it away, but found that the meat now – while still savoury – had a peculiar dryness to it that made him long for something to quench his thirst. Damn it, he was not thirty-something anymore – he could have some self-control. He squinted and looked about the table for water, but had no luck finding any.

There was a burst of cheering and Tony turned to see Loki, now in female form, saunter down from the dais and over to their table, his hips swaying as he walked. When he reached the chair on Thor's right, he performed a deep curtsey that displayed his cleavage for the entire courtyard to see, drawing yet another burst of cheering – and laughter. Tony rolled his eyes. On his other side, Steve was busy being engaged by Green Arrow – aka Fandral, again from the New Mexico reports – who was going on about something called 'flyting'. Well, at least Steve was having fun, even if he mostly looked bemused by their topic of conversation.

The attention of the crowds turned elsewhere; a large, dark-skinned fellow with a truly impressive hair-style – no helmet needed when your hair could do _that_ – had clambered up onto a chair to regale those nearby with a loud tale. His gestures were large and encompassing, made no less so by the fact that he seemed to be missing his right hand. Tony squinted – hadn't there been a myth about that guy? The pleasant, golden hum of mead in his blood made it difficult to recall.

"Týr has ever been the first to laud his own courage," said an amused, feminine voice in his ear. Tony turned his head to see Loki leaning down over his chair, his boobs – wow, that was a weird thought – pushed forward by the way he had arranged his arms. Tony blinked once, hard, and forced himself to look up at Loki's face, because damn, even if that was a nice rack, it was _not_ the time to be distracted by a shapechanger's feminine wiles.

"The night deepens, and I'm sure there will be speeches, yet, enough to bore us both to tears. Please, it is but a small favour I ask: to know what my daughter said. It has been so long since we last spoke."

What was his game? Shit. Tony tried to kick Steve in the shin and get his attention, but ended up kicking a chair-leg instead – at least he thought it was a chair-leg. He put out a hand to shake him, instead, but Loki caught it in two of his own – and oh, he really, _really_ pulled off being a woman well. His fingers were long and delicate, gently curving, _feminine_.

"She is my daughter, Stark," Loki said, holding Tony's eyes with his own. "Surely there is someone within your own realm whom you love – whom you would beg of news for, even from an unreliable source."

Tony swallowed, his mouth feeling uncomfortably dry. He longed for another sip of mead to wet his throat – and push away the dark worry knotted up in the back of his brain. Pepper Pepper Pepper – he licked his lips and conjured up a half-truth to offer the trickster – he didn't want to part with a whole, but he needed _something_ to say, something to get Loki to show a bit more of his hand. "Yeah, well, she said she didn't like me, and I should get the hell out of her realm."

Loki frowned; like everything else about him in this form, it was graceful, alluring. "I doubt that. Were my daughter so opposed to visitors, she would break the Gjallerbrú instead of merely appointing Móðguðr to guard it. But you do not entirely lie... she did offer you an exit." His fingers twined with Tony's; with his other hand, he cupped Tony's cheek. His eyes locked with Tony's – and _oh,_ that was what a god's eyes looked like up close – or a pan-dimensional alien's; near enough. Tony could have drowned in them; he couldn't blink –

"She offered oblivion," Tony snapped without thinking, wrenching his head away. The room spun at the sudden motion, lights trailing streaks behind them. He felt dizzy, stupid, intoxicated on mead and the bright green of Loki's eyes. Fuck, he shouldn't have drunk so much – wasn't that a staple of fantasy? Do _not_ look at the wizard's eyes. Fuck Steve, too, and his fucking ideas about _magic,_why hadn't he interfered just now? What other magic had Loki worked?

"Did she now," Loki breathed – it wasn't a question, it was confirmation. Triumph. Shit. What did that mean? Had he seen something in Tony's brain? The other Loki had taken a pick-ax to Selvig's, Barton's brain, fucked them up and brainwashed them – could this one pull things out as well as stick them in?

"Loki!" boomed Thor from Tony's other side. His voice was deep, if not as deep as Heimdallr's, and it made Tony's head ache slightly. "Father looks to be starting the toasts – come, sit!" Thor bounded out of his own chair and drew out Loki's seat with over-exaggerated courtesy; Loki disengaged from Tony and glided across to the chair in one smooth movement, and the pretended to swoon into it among cheering and laughter.

As soon as Thor had retaken his seat, there was the sound of stone scraping against stone, and Odin stood. A moment later his staff came down upon the floor, with another one of those _booms_that made Tony's bones ache; aided by the mead, it also made his head swim. Silence reigned over the courtyard in its wake.

"My friends," Odin said. "My subjects. My sons." He turned toward their table with a slight smile, which Thor and Loki both returned with grins – Thor's open and honest, and Loki's like the Cheshire Cat's. "Today has been a most auspicious day, started in ruin with the loss of one of our most potent weapons – and ended in triumph, with its return!"

Brief cheering broke out, but was quickly hushed as Odin went on. "My sons today have proven themselves worthy of their titles as princes of this realm! And my eldest, Thor – rise."

Thor rose, slowly, one hand on Mjolnir at his hip – not in threat, but to draw eyes to it; he was still grinning happily.

"Thor – my son – this day, you have proven yourself worthy of a mighty weapon. You have earned its favour and its trust. Be known to all now as crown prince of Asgard, and moreover, as the God of Thunder, wielder of Mjolnir's lighting!"

The courtyard broke out into deafening cheers as Thor raised Mjolnir high over his head, shaking it in his fist. Lighting flashed and a _crack_ of thunder boomed, just making everyone cheer harder. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony watched Loki – who was smiling, open and honestly, applauding just as hard – no, harder – than anyone else.

Tony leaned over to Steve and spoke directly into his ear. "I can't figure out what Loki's game is. I think he got something from me but – I don't know."

Steve leaned in as well, and Tony turned his head so he could reply. "We need to stick by Thor – we know we can trust him, at least. Once this whole feast is over we can ask him about getting home. I don't think anyone else here cares."

"You're sure we can trust him? He's cavorting around with Loki."

Steve shook his head. "Loki's always been his blind spot – but Thor's good people."

Tony frowned slightly, but let his expression clear as he sat back – only to gaze about in shock. He hid it quickly.

The courtyard was the same – overdone golden statues and all – but the people were _different_. Someone other than Fandral was now sitting on Steve's left – a woman wearing a sword and armour, her eyes like flint for all that she was smiling. One long scar ran down the side of her face. Tony would have pegged her as Sif – but the scar, that was definitely new. He turned to look at Thor, but he, too, had changed – most noticeably, he now had a full beard, woven into thick braids that reached down to the middle of his chest. The hair on top of his head had grown longer, too, and now pulled back in a loose ponytail – but he was still grinning, holding Mjolnir aloft as he spoke to the person on his right – who was _not_ Loki, anymore, unless Loki had shapeshifted again, into the grim and dour-faced man that reports had identified as Hogun the Grim.

"Shit," he muttered, looking around. There seemed to be more people, too. He caught Steve's eye, but Steve looked just as shaken as Tony felt.

"We looked away and time slipped past," Steve said in a low voice.

"Right. We need to... keep an eye on that," Tony said, reaching for his flagon and taking a healthy swallow. Screw it, he was already drunk anyway.

The sudden sound of a rooster crowing echoed throughout the hall, high and loud enough to carry even over the multitude of conversations. All heads swung in the direction of the great golden rooster statue that was – apparently – not _actually_ a statue. Tony blinked at it as it crowed again, sounding even louder in the quiet that had resulted.

"That's the third time that's happened," he said, not even bothering with the cock jokes this time because really, _third time_, it was done, and more than that, the number three seemed... important: a thought that solidified as the rooster crowed once more (_another_ third time) before shutting its beak and resuming its statue-like stillness.

"You must be mistaken; Gullinkambi has not crowed since this hall was founded," Thor said, clapping him on the shoulder. The suit barely rescued him from going face-first into his plate. "It is an omen, then, of this feast's importance!" There was a slight but noticeable slur in his speech – huh, so Tony wasn't the only one getting sloshed.

"A good omen, or a bad omen?" Steve asked, as Tony shoved his plate away so he could put his elbows on the table and steeple his fingers in an impressive thinking pose. Maybe it would prevent Thor from trying to cause him to face-plant again. There was something – damnit, the mead made it hard to think – he shook his head violently, then vaguely regretted it when the action only made him feel dizzier. The cocks. Cock, cock, cock, he kept getting distracted by that word, but that wasn't the _important_ word, the important word was the _title_, even he knew that and he'd nearly flunked his required English course at MIT, coasting by on a D. And the title of _that _myth, the myth about the cocks, that title had been –

"Oh, shit," Tony blurted, shoving his chair back and stumbling to his feet. He looked around wildly. Who among this set of drunken revellers would know – Odin. But Odin was nowhere to be found, although Tony would have sworn he'd been at the high table just a moment before... right before everything had changed. _Shit._

"Tony?" Steve said, pushing back his own chair and standing as well. Quite helpfully, he also clapped a hand on Tony's shoulder, keeping him from swaying. "Are you okay?"

"The feast-meats do sometimes disagree," Thor said from his other side, sounding concerned. "If you are in need, there are places where you can relieve yourself – "

"No, no, nonono," Tony said, waving his hands. "The rooster, the _crowing cock_, shit, I am such a _child_, I am a fourteen year old teenage _moron_ who lets himself get distracted with – three roosters crow, it's an omen, part of a prophecy – one from the myths that I read, because they've all matched up – uh, more or less, I don't think Steve and I were supposed to be there for the whole cross-dressing thing – "

"Your aid with the matter was greatly appreciated," Thor noted, because apparently he'd learned by now, whatever age that was, that sometimes the only way to get a word in edgewise when Tony had stuff to say (which was, he could be honest, _all the time_) was to just talk over top of him. A small section of Tony's brain that was not busy freaking out appreciated that; seriously, he could talk and listen at the same time just fine, all this 'waiting for other people to not be speaking' nonsense just wasted time, and did they have no idea how valuable his time was?

The rest of him continued right on with freaking out. " – right, but it _happened_, that's my point, Loki even told the same lies, I swear that Thrym quoted straight from it, and Brynhild – Modgud –_Hel_ – they all match up, when you – my you, my world's version of you, none of it matched up, but _here_ it does – "

He was vaguely aware that there was a growing bubble of quiet around him. It was not an unfamiliar bubble: it was the kind generated when somebody said something extremely awkward in the presence of someone respected. The familiarity was almost soothing - well, it wasn't as if the awkwardness _bothered_ him, and anyway he was busy freaking out about the end of the world, social propriety could go take a hike.

"Anthony Edward Stark," said a cool, feminine voice, and his heart jolted. That was –

That was his mother's voice.

_No, it isn't_, a more logical part of his brain insisted. _Maria didn't sound like that at all._ And he knew it was true, it _was_, but there was something about whoever had just spoken – Tony turned, slowly, leaning on Steve for a bit more support than he actually needed. He wanted to go sit at her feet, rest his head in her lap, and let her stroke his hair while telling him how everything would be okay. How Father was gone to keep the bad men away, to make sure they would be safe. But he would come home soon, and until then they could have cocoa with marshmallows.

There was a clatter of scraping chairs as people got up to bow to the queen – or, in the case of Thor, nod respectfully, and then embrace her with gentle enthusiasm. "Mother," he said with a smile.

She smiled back at him, patting his shoulder, and said gently, "Your father has gone for a brief time, but when he returns, he would speak to you in council. Attend to him in his chambers, if you please."

Thor nodded. "Is it - ?" he cut himself off, but from the look on his face and the faces of everybody around them, they knew what he would be asking. Tony wondered if he meant Loki – or had something else happened that they hadn't seen, in this strange slippery timestream?

Frigga's face grew still, but her voice was steady as she said, "Go, Thor."

Obviously confused, Thor nodded again, and took his leave only slightly tipsily. Frigga smiled at the other guests, and even though she wasn't smiling at him, Tony wanted to bask in the warmth of it. Jesus. If he could find a way to bottle that effect – was it more of their 'magic'? The myths had said that sorcery was a woman's art, but –

"I thought that Odin was the magician," he said, eyes narrowed, as Frigga turned and left the courtyard, towing Steve and Tony along like ducklings in her wake. Well, Steve followed her, and sort of steered Tony along as well; it seemed his feet weren't up to carrying him anywhere that Steve wasn't around to keep him upright. _Unlike_ Thor, his diction was still perfectly crisp and clear – so alien alcohol or no, he could at least keep _that _much of his dignity.

"It is true that my husband donned a woman's garb and learned our arts, but who did you believe had taught him?" Frigga said, leading them inside and up a grand flight of stairs. Her amusement was like strawberries on a warm summer's day. Wait, no, that wasn't right, Pepper was allergic to strawberries. Blueberries, then. He could see meadows and flowers blooming at her words, almost more real than the near-empty hallway around them.

"I think I'm missing something, ma'am," Steve said. Tony glanced at his face – his words might be polite, but his expression was like granite. Huh. The mother-thing was getting to him, too.

"Not so, good Captain," she replied. "You have wondered of the coming of Ragnarok, have you not?" She smiled again at his taken-aback confession. "Heimdallr hears all, and informed me that your suspicion might be pertinent."

She withdrew a key from a pouch on her belt – fanny packs usually looked ridiculous, honestly, Tony had never seen one that didn't look completely disco, but somehow Frigga managed to pull off the belt-pouch thing. Then again, she probably could have looked simultaneously imperious and motherly in anything from her birthday suit to a clown costume. The key unlocked an imposing set of doors (as if there were any other kind in Asgard) and she let them out onto the balcony.

Shouts and the sound of drums met their ears. Tony leaned heavily on the railing, no longer from drunkenness, but from the sight of it all. The sky had split in two, the stars above breaking in half and the void boiling out like eternal night. Below, tiny, far-off riders galloped toward Asgard along the rainbow bridge – but they left fire in their wake; chunks of the bridge were already falling, turning to ash and dropping into the sea below. The rider in front was so bright that it hurt to look at. Soldiers manned the walls of Asgard, but they were already besieged by another army, and even as they watched an enormous river of ice spewed forth from nowhere, sweeping over the left-hand walls and providing a road over the defences for the frost giants that now swarmed forth.

An enormous wolf, easily the size of a building – and in Asgard, that meant a lot more than it did on Earth – leapt the walls in a single bound and lifted its head to the sky. Its howl temporarily drowned the sounds of fighting, until it was met with the sound of a horn blowing – summoning war. Summoning the end times.

"This is our twilight," Frigga said calmly. Her dress blew back in the wind, unfurling out behind her like a banner.

"We can help," Steve said immediately, her words apparently hastening him to get over his own horror. "We'll help – where's your armoury, I need to grab a weapon. Iron Man, are you good to – "

"Captain, this is not your fight," Frigga said gently, placing one hand on his shoulder. As tall as any other Asgardian, she topped even Steve for height. "Nor is there anything you can do, for this is not the first twilight of the gods. As the day turns and renews, so do we."

"No offense, ma'am," Steve said tightly, "But I'm not the sort to sit and wait."

"Cap's right, we can help – save a few more civilians that would've been lost," Tony said tightly. "I've read those myths, we can save lives." He was about to pull the faceplate down, but Frigga's hand was suddenly resting on his cheek. His skin burned hot and then cold – when she pulled her hand away, all the alcohol was gone from his system. "Nice trick. Thanks," he muttered, and slammed the plate down.

"Captain, if you wish to fight, that is your right," Frigga said quietly. "We have many armouries on the main level of the palace, and they have been thrown open to all who would defend this realm or themselves. But I would beg a further moment of your time, Stark."

Steve and Tony shared glances. If they got separated now, in a realm under siege – well, hell, who knew what the odds were of coming out of this anyway? "Go, Cap," Tony told him. "Good luck."

"You, too," Steve clapped him on the shoulder, and then he was gone.

The HUD let him zoom in on anything. A dozen individual battles played out in his view, with the major scene compressed to the bottom half of the screen. "So what's still important even at the end of the world?" he asked Frigga casually. He'd spotted Odin, riding out on an eight-legged horse – oh, Jesus, that myth was true, too? – straight for the giant wolf. Was this where Odin died? He'd barely skimmed the latter half of the Ragnarok myth – it got kinda repetitive after a while. He dies, she dies, we all die.

"There are many myths of Asgard, spread across many worlds," Frigga said. "As our personalities spread, so do the tales. But the true prophecies have always been kept here – although even they may be proved false. Since your arrival, you have spoken of truths that no mortal should hold, and intimated that you know more. Heimdall has searched on every world and he can find none where the legends match so exactly. So, I must ask: what are you, Stark? Did my son bring you here, hoping that your presence would disrupt the course of history? Did he conjure you that you might take an active role in that disruption?"

The frost giants and the fire giants were fighting each other, seemingly without regard for the fact that they both stood on enemy soil. It was a brutal, chaotic melee, no holds barred. Tony hoped that Steve would have the sense to stay well away from that part of the fight – nobody there wanted or needed any help.

"Look, as far as I know, I fell here by complete accident. I just want to get back to my world," he said seriously.

"You saw things, as you fell," Frigga observed, " – is that where you learned these truths?"

The giant wolf snapped Odin up in his jaws and tossed him skyward; a second snap, even as Odin lashed out with his spear, and the All-Father was gone, swallowed whole. A warrior – who nearly resembled Thor, but without the cape and hammer – launched himself at the creature, mouth open in a scream and face fixed with rage. There was a flash of a sword, and a great gout of blood spurted from the side of the wolf's face as its jaw drooped open, unhinged.

"I saw stuff, there, yeah," Tony acknowledged, focusing on the fight. Blood and guts he could handle far better than the memory of that impossible curve. "But nobody was reading me fairytales."

"My husband hung there for nine days, to earn wisdom – but he did not fall," Frigga said quietly. "My son Loki fell for an eternity and returned far changed. You know the thing that lurks there. I can see the cracks that it has made in your mind."

Tony shuddered involuntarily, but the suit absorbed and hid the motion. "Yeah, and that doesn't make sense," he argued, because either way – well, either way _sucked_, as far as his options went. "Hel's Loki's daughter, she controls the – thing, why does _he_ have a problem with it?" Below, the wolf, burdened by blood loss, was too slow to dodge, and Odin's avenger thrust a spear into its heart. It shuddered, then fell, the impact loud enough to be heard from their far perch.

"My grand-daughter is dead," Frigga said, and her voice could have been made of ice, salted tears from a dozen bereft mothers, frozen in the cold of deepest winter. "She was born dead, and was dead long 'ere my husband appointed her queen of the only realm in which she might find solace. Things that do not have the breath of life cannot have it twisted within them, or ripped from them, and thus they are both protected from and bereft of the truths that the living might see. My son, however," her voice dipped, low and mournful, "he has been changed by it – too much so, I fear. And your continued presence here, spouting myths that you should have no knowledge of, prophecies that are truer than our own, alarms me greatly. Look," she raised one hand elegantly to point down at the battlefield. Tony refocused one of his cameras and saw Loki and Heimdallr, fighting, spear against mighty sword. Both had taken wounds. Loki wasn't wearing the green-on-black armour he'd had before; what he wore now was closer to half-plate, if any armourer would make the plates from bones. It gleamed sickly white.

"Loki kills him," Tony muttered. "I remember that part, it was one of the parts right before he summoned the giant snake."

Frigga looked up sharply. "The foretelling holds that they slay each other."

The sky opened up. Fire burst from the heavens, like a million blooming flowers; Tony slid sideways and clanged against the railing as gravity seemed to lurch about. Frigga was unaffected, her hand never leaving the rail – and then gravity went back to normal, leaving him half leaning over the railing and hanging on for dear life, even though he could fly.

So far away, Loki brought his spear down, around, parried the sword, and buried the spearhead in Heimdall's stomach. The watcher didn't even flinch, bringing his sword up and around, darting in at Loki's neck – but one hand whipped up, a dagger held to parry; the sword skittered up and over Loki's head from the redirected force of the blow. Savagely, Loki ripped the spear back and slashed its end down across Heimdallr's throat, in under the protection afforded by his helmet – and the larger god collapsed, blood spurting from the arterial wound.

Tony felt sick. Paralyzed. He'd just watched a man – well, okay, a person – die and he hadn't been anywhere near the fight. These people weren't human, but he _knew_ them, and even if they were shitty people they were still dying right in front of him while he did _nothing_ –

"The myth has changed," Frigga whispered, looking at him, _afraid_. "What has your presence here done, Stark? How has our world become slaved to your myths, undoing the wills of the even the norns? Will this be our final end?"

"Wonder all you like, but I'm gone," he snapped, activating flight controls as he stepped to the side away from her. A moment later he was soaring away from the balcony, repulsors flaring as he locked onto his target.

"JARVIS, same as before, keep an eye out for illusions," he warned, because he'd seen the tapes of how the bastard had killed Phil. "And watch out for Cap, too." He passed over the ice-road as he flew, and blasted it with the repulsors on the far side, chipping out a gap – pity he didn't have any missiles left, but he'd used all of those up in Manhattan. He levelled out, close to the ground even as combatants leapt in his direction – and then he went supersonic.

The shockwave knocked the closest ones off their feet, but he didn't care about that. He slammed into Loki at Mach 3, hard enough to reduce any human to paste – hard enough to knock the wind out of a god. Loki was limp in his grip for only a second, and then he was clawing at the suit, his knives somehow managing to cut through the plating – goddamn alien technology. Tony initiated evasive manoeuvring and threw him off-balance again, and then tossed him off with a full-power repulsor blast as one of the knives got way too close to his neck.

Reality _jolted_. The skies weren't above or below him – they were right in front of him, replacing the sea, as overhead one of the enormous roots of Yggdrasil writhed in pain, burning. Somewhere out there was the Níðhöggr, and he curled himself up into a ball rather than risk seeing it. JARVIS had amped up the volume on the internal speakers, and was demanding, _"Sir, diagnostics do not show damage, what is –_ " but he could barely hear it as he screamed, as loud as he could, to keep any sight or sound of that creature at bay.

A long moment where there were stars rather than water, and shadows where there had been light, and fire where darkness had reigned – and then it snapped back, sending him tumbling across the ground_, hard_. He scrambled to his feet, snapping at JARVIS and scanning for Loki. Where had he gone? Corpses surrounded him, and some not-quite corpses – he was still near where the wall had been breached. In the distance, the golden towers of Asgard were burning, and one had already collapsed, jagged and smoking. He couldn't be concerned with that, though, not when –

"_Watch out!_"

_Steve_, Tony thought. Instincts forged of shared battle had already kicked in and he'd fired the thrusters, thrown himself tens of metres into the air in a blink of an eye. Below him, blue fire exploded, leaving a crater where he'd been standing, and he whirled to see Loki vanish just before a wooden shield would have bashed through his head. It arced, but not far enough to return to Steve before Tony landed. Steve didn't go after it, though, just scooped up a nearer shield that had been discarded by some fallen warrior. It matched the sword he was already carrying.

"Loki's changing things from their myths," he filled Steve in, grabbing him and taking to the air again – they needed up, they needed a view of what was going on. "We need to find him and take him down before he ends everything. Where's Thor?" They _might_ be able to take Loki on together, even without Steve's shield, and the armour already damaged and low on ammo. If Steve could pin him down long enough for Tony to get a clear shot with the lasers, that might work - but they couldn't afford too many tries; the lasers drained power like crazy. Thor could summon lightning – he could turn the course of this entire battle.

"On Earth," Steve shouted over the wind as they flew. "Odin sent him there before the bifrost fell. It's up to us."

"Great," Tony started to say, and everything turned upside down. The ground and the sea were above them, splitting open – enormous coils filled the void, scales sliding against scales as the body of an enormous snake writhed – the stars were below them, but they were the wrong stars; they were the stars of earth, and the stars of the Chitauri, and the stars of Asgard, all laid over top of each other and being crushed together. Their light was the brightness of a thousand dying suns. He wanted to hide but he couldn't drop Steve –

It snapped back again and he righted them automatically. Somehow, probably thanks to JARVIS, he hadn't dropped Steve. "That – that's happened before. What is it?" Steve asked.

Sensors located a flash of green and gold. Tony tightened his grip and sped up – having Steve there would be better than just hitting Loki again at supersonic speeds. "Yggdrasil's dying," he said grimly. "Didn't you see the root?"

Steve's response was muffled by the wind, but the sensors managed to clear it up enough to be intelligible. "No – are we seeing different things?"

"Maybe. Ready?" They were near – he barely had time to register Steve's nod before he was throwing him in Loki's direction. Steve hit shield-first – the wood shattered, and Steve flipped away as Loki snarled and swung his spear outward. They parried, lightning fast as Tony dove behind them and flattened a half-dozen frost giants, then brought his arm up as soon as he had a clear shot. The laser mount opened up.

Loki caught Steve's wrist with a blow from his offhand, sending Steve's sword flying; as Steve rolled away, regrouping, he flicked the spear around and intercepted the red beam with the glowing blue spearhead. The laser reflected back, flashing about at odd angles, and nearly cutting Tony's leg off before he killed power – it left a scorch down the side of the left thigh, melting the paint job, and he cursed. Then he had to dodge to the side as a bolt of blue fire came his way.

"Old fashioned way, then," he said grimly, raising his hands palms-outward, and that was when reality shivered again. The ground went loose beneath his feet, and he staggered – overhead, somewhere, was that _thing_, and underneath, and he couldn't move, could barely breathe, unnatural fear swamping him mind –

It corrected, again, and he tried to move, to take off – but he'd sunk into the broken ruin of the ground, and rock had solidified around him, leaving only his head and his left hand free. A few yards away Loki rose to his feet, saw Tony's predicament, and smiled.

Steve attacked him from behind, landing a kick to Loki's head that sent his stupid antlered helmet flying; Tony felt like cheering. "JARVIS, analysis," he said instead, already aiming a few experimental repulsor blasts; he got most of his neck free, but aiming was a problem with his wrist so encased – he needed to get his arm free. Steve couldn't take Loki in a straight, one-on-one fight, but Tony could hope like hell that he'd buy him enough time.

Loki caught Steve with a glancing blow and dropped the spear, bringing his suddenly free hand around and clamping it down on the side of Steve's neck. Green-blue light flickered about Loki's hand and Steve collapsed with an agonized cry. Tony tried to meet his eyes, but the angle was all wrong – Steve was trying to get to his feet, trying and failing, his limbs twitching like he'd been electrocuted. Calmly, Loki retrieved the spear, and raised it high.

Steve vanished.

Loki raised his eyebrows – so much calmer, so much more _understanding_ than he had been when, barely two days before, he'd tapped his Sceptre against Tony's chest and it had failed to make him Loki's bitch. "Ah," he said, in that drawn-out accent of his. "Inconvenient timing – as always – but little matter. He will die in the end." Smiling his half-smile, he turned and strolled over to where Tony was still mostly trapped by the stone, little chips of it scattered around him. Tony cursed under his breath; just _a little bit more_ and he could angle his wrist properly, god _damn it_ –

Loki gently set the butt of the Spear down upon his hand, breaking it free of the stone and pinning it down as surely as if he'd nailed a spike through it. Then he knelt, patiently waiting until Tony stopped grunting and grimacing and trying to free his hand, and instead looked up back at him.

"Every single universe," Loki mused softly, "and you always bring this upon yourself." He waved a hand languidly at the stone. "You throw yourself in front of him, in front of all of them – so desperate to die. And you always fail to do so. Whereas he – " a scrap of Steve's flag waved from between Loki's fingers, " – he dies. He _throws_ himself on the wire."

Tony stared back and tried not to swallow. Was it chance? Or had the god pulled that from his mind? He tried to pull his gaze away and found he couldn't.

"He always dies, Tony," Loki said, and the name sounded so goddamned _intimate_ on his tongue. "He becomes ensnared up in your plans and takes a bullet to the heart. He commits suicide to save your nation and your world. But you," and Tony saw the vast roots of Yggdrasil in his eyes, "you, who have striven _so hard_ to be a martyr, to lay down as the sacrificial lamb and be forgiven – in every world you are denied. And I see no reason to discontinue that trend, to spare you the sight of Creation come undone."

Stone crept over Tony's hand, trapping it, too. Loki stood, and the stone rose with him, keeping Tony on eye level with him and helpless. Well, almost helpless. "JARVIS, blow everything," he said quietly, on the internal comm only.

_"Sir – "_

"No." Loki laid one long finger upon the helmet's forehead. The suit went dead and silent as all power was sucked out of it, and Tony felt something click near his chest – the thin cabling to his personal arc reactor disconnecting. Without that connection, he couldn't use it as a backup. "This is my promise to you, Stark. You will survive Ragnarok. You will watch the worlds die and fall into everlasting night. And as you wander the ruins, eternal, you will know that _you_ did this."

No. No – this wasn't his fault, for once, none of this had been his fault – _had it? _"The world reforms after Ragnarok, you ignorant twit," Tony snapped, quick and unable to be shaky with the suit holding him still.

Loki smiled. "Not this time."

The world went sideways. Stone cracked and groaned, but Tony couldn't take advantage of the opportunity to try to pull free; he was busy craning his head around, trying to figure out what was happening this time. Some part of him registered that, in front of him, Loki was doing the same, with the same look of fear on his face as Tony knew he himself wore. But this time it was water, and rain, and rocks – and something monstrously large in the dark –

"LOKI!"

Lightning thundered down and turned his vision white.

_" – it has been an hon – "_

"Cancel that!" he ordered quickly. "Cancel, sorry JARVIS, you got knocked out for a sec – put everything back into the repulsors, we're getting the hell out of here – "

_"With the repulsors also encased, this method is unlikely to – "_

"Unless you've got a better option I don't want to hear it," Tony cut him off, gritting his teeth. After only a few blasts, his hands were already becoming numb – a welcome relief; his abused left arm had been protesting in earnest – and the diagrams from the suits sensors showed that progress was going even slower than before. He was chipping the stone, all right – but the chips had nowhere to go, and they acted like a buffer between the repulsors and the unchipped stone, getting turned to fine sand instead of passing the force on.

He couldn't see Loki. "Where is he," he muttered, but having so much of the suit encased meant that the external sensors were reading a whole lot of rock and fuck-all else. The sky was darker than it had been, all the stars obscured by thick, rain-choked clouds, the type Thor liked to play with – which made sense, because that had definitely been Thor's voice – had the worlds crashed together, then? He could no longer see the towers of Asgard; was that because he was elsewhere, or because they had fallen?

Something slammed into the stone, and he went flying, spinning nauseatingly before hitting with a bone-jarring impact. "JARVIS – " he began, but JARVIS was already replying, _"That appears to have caused exploitable fractures, sir,"_ diagrams lighting up with the information. Tony took advantage accordingly.

But he couldn't help but watch – even though he was now lying tilted on his side, the world at a 108-degree angle from up. The sky crackled with lightning, which flashed down, again and again. By its light Tony could see what had hit him: a serpent, the serpent that had loomed in the sky, so large it made him snort with disbelief. It had thrown him uphill, and from this vantage point, he could see coils upon coils that bunched and flowed, each at least three metres in diameter, the scales glossy and black. There was no end to it – the coils went on and on, and although Tony could see the head – that was where Thor's lightning was striking – he couldn't believe its tail ever ended. The thing was just too _massive_.

In the heart of the storm he had created, Thor raised his hammer high, and let it fall.

The pulse of lightning reached even Tony, momentarily blinding him; it would have been more than momentary, if he hadn't had the faceplate down. "Repulsors," he snapped, before JARVIS asked him what to do with the additional power. The massive coils of the serpent shuddered in their death throes, but none slammed into him again – a pity, he thought, since he could have used the help. He could _almost_ wiggle his arms – he was getting close to freedom –

The clouds lightened, beginning to disperse. Thor, standing in a small crater within the corpse, stood wearily. Gore clung to him, dying his blond hair and beard red – now, fresh from the battle and sporting wounds of his own, he at last fully matched the descriptions of the Norse myths. _It all turns out true_, Tony thought as Thor began to walk towards him, and then his brain went and parsed that again.

Thor was walking towards him.

_Ragnarok _– _slay the serpent – walk nine paces –_

His brain replayed. Thor was walking towards him – three steps –

"Stop!" Tony shouted desperately, but Thor didn't seem to hear him, taking another slow, unsteady step. "Thor, STOP! Stop walking, just – stop, stay there – JARVIS, increase the damn power – " He had to get out, he had to get out!

_"Sir, the left gauntlet repulsor is sustaining damage,"_ JARVIS warned.

Thor looked up at him in concern, pausing, and the relief made Tony feel light-headed. "Anthony – are you injured? I will free you," and Tony could hear his words begin to slur from the venom. He'd been bitten – where? –

He took another step, and Tony yelled, "No, no, damn it, don't come any nearer!" as he took another.

Thor held up his hand, and declared firmly, "If it is a trap, I will brave it nonetheless," even as his voice shook, and he'd taken two more steps, ignoring Tony's curses.

_"You'll kill me!"_ Tony shouted, and finally, _finally_, that lie stopped Thor, on _eight fucking steps_, and he looked up at Tony with confusion written all over his face. The armour's main camera zoomed in when Tony unwittingly locked his eyes onto Thor's for too long; the god was ashen, his eyes unfocused.

"Just – _stay,_" Tony pleaded with him. "I'm nearly out, and then that'll be good – " The rock gave overtop of his right repulsor, and if his hand had long since gone numb, it didn't matter. Tony whooped as he pulled it free of the stone.

Loki reappeared, halfway between Thor and Tony. He wasn't wearing his helmet. Instead, his hair was loose, unkempt, and instead of the bone-plate, his armour was the same as it had been when they'd all walked out of Jǫtunheimr together. "Brother?" he asked tentatively, raising a hand.

Thor's face was a picture of surprise, both wary and pleased. One hand went to Mjolnir, but the other went up, reaching out almost reflexively, because Thor was the most dependable, predictable moron who ever fucking lived, automatically taking a step towards his brother –

_No, no, NO!_

Thor blinked and fell to the earth, and was still.

Tony was already sending a full-power repulsor blast towards Loki, but he flickered and disappeared as reality twisted inside out. He might as well have been nothing more than an illusion, except for his voice – his voice was everywhere; it was all Tony could hear. Neither JARVIS nor the suit's automated warnings could break through. The mocking laughter made his spine crawl, and beneath it was a hissing whisper that bit at his ears: _"My promise to you, Stark."_

The sky snapped back, and it was black and filled with stars. Tony stared out at it, and out at the monstrous coils of the snake that were now nothing more than so many tonnes of dead flesh. Mechanically, he brought his right hand around and started chipping his other arm free. The left-hand repulsor didn't seem to be working anymore – when had that happened? His brain – his wonderful, horrible brain – informed him it had cracked upon the seventh step. The hand-done repairs he'd made to reattach the repulsor couldn't match the original machining.

It took him a while to free enough of his body that he could fire the boot repulsors and launch himself out of the rock. Reality groaned again before he was half-way done, and the darkness was replaced by flames that lingered even after it had returned to normal – if he could consider any of this 'normal'. Where the towers of Asgard had been, now pillars of fire soared up to the heavens, giving off thick smoke that obscured the stars.

Tony kicked skyward just in time for another wave of _wrong_. The time between them seemed to be increasing. Below him, the ground shuddered and crumbled, and waves from the shore crashed over dry land, washing over the dead serpent. Tony thought of all of that flesh, putrescent and rotting, floating about, and almost gagged. Thor's corpse was quickly covered as the water rushed inland; weighed down as it was by armour and hammer, the initial flood of water barely stirred it. Perhaps that was for the best. The last glimpse that Tony caught of Thor's face showed him decaying, purple-green flesh beginning to tear free of the skull – the venom was potent even after its victim's death.

Great gouts of steam billowed up from the ruins of Asgard. The flood had taken barely a minute to reach that far. Behind the broken towers, the mountains were much diminished, their snowcaps burned away, but they, at least, still stood – for now. They were as black as everything else, covered in soot. Some part of Tony marvelled at the speed of the destruction.

The suit's sensors couldn't pick up any survivors. There had to be – but everything that had been close to the shore was covered by the dead serpent's body. He flew inland, slowly enough that he could look for any trace of the living, but even after he passed the outer walls of Asgard and left behind the serpent's carcass, all he could find among the floating debris were corpses.

Atop the breach in one of the walls, not yet washed away, lay Heimdallr's body. He was no more dignified in death than Thor, his pose crumpled and his face gone slack. The bodies of frost giants lay littered around him – those that he'd killed before he'd so unsuccessfully dueled Loki. Some ways beyond him, the massive body of the wolf that had eaten Odin was swiftly being covered by the waves, its matted fur already soaked through. Its killer was perched atop its head, with half his face burned away; in turn his killer, a fire giant, lay dead on the beast's back, smouldering in the damp fur.

Reality flickered. Tony tried to order the HUB dead, but he had no voice. All the stars had gone out, leaving everything dark – but somehow, even without light, he could see the _thing_ that stirred in the void, see the gashes it had made in the enormous, dying roots of Yggdrasil. The tree groaned and writhed, its death throes heaving about space itself before it finally split in twain, sending splinters the size of planets flying. Tony was tossed headlong, screaming as he caught a glimpse of the Níðhöggr's impossible spine.

He crashed into something as the universe gave one last shudder and the Níðhöggr vanished. Pain lanced up his neck as the armour bent under the force, but he didn't care – that thing eating into his brain was gone, at least for now, and he groaned in relief. _"Sir,_" JARVIS said worriedly, saying something about his surroundings, but Tony didn't care. He just wanted to lie there for a while. It had been – it had been a shitty day all around, he wanted a break.

He wanted to go _home_, but he wasn't sure that existed anymore. He wanted to see Pepper, to hold her and tell her that he loved her – but if she was gone...

Tony forced himself to his feet and shook his head violently. If he let his thoughts run away from him then he'd end up laying down and dying. There were still stars here, there might still be other people alive, no matter what Loki had said – Loki Liesmith, Loki Silvertongue, why the hell would he believe what Loki had said? He launched himself into the air, leaving behind a small crater.

"JARVIS, prepare a full-spectrum sensor sweep – anyone still moving down there, I want to know about it," he ordered as he gained altitude. The ground dropped away beneath him, although the stars became no brighter. Over the edge of the world, where the sea still flowed into the abyss – so where did the water come from to replace it? – he caught a glimpse of a blackened sun, the last burning embers in its heart slowly fading away.

_"Sir, there is something else I believe you should direct your attention toward," _JARVIS reported, while Tony stared into the heart of the dying sun. In the lower corner of the screen, JARVIS popped up a zoomed-in version of something sitting on the edge of the sea, at the boundary of space: the dome of the bifrost machine. It didn't appear to be supported by anything – but then, the rainbow bridge couldn't have supported it in the first place; whatever supported it must have been invisible all along. It _had_ clearly taken damage: there was a hole blown in the side of the machine, and the entire thing sat on a tilt, looking ready to fall into the void at any moment.

If there was any way off this planet, it would be that machine.

"Good catch, JARVIS," he said, and took off for the sea.

He'd made it barely half a mile before he spotted the Níðhöggr again. It appeared seemingly from nowhere, and he nearly fell out of the air before the autopilot kicked in and JARVIS had the presence of mind to turn cameras off. Skimming low over the water brought him some measure of protection, and he dropped behind the last patch of half-submerged ruins, trembling as he sought to put anything he could between it and him. Fractal teeth, their every point bending light, chewed on corpses as it flew, low to the ground. A bizarre paradox of a limb reached out and snatched another corpse – which moved weakly in protest, even though IR read it at the same temperature as its surrounds. A living corpse.

"Shit, shit, shit," Tony chanted, "JARVIS – fucking hell! Get us out of here!" The thrusters kicked in without further input and he shot away, going supersonic as he left the ruins behind. The Níðhöggr dipped behind far-off hills and disappeared from his mind's eye.

_"Sir, I cannot perceive whatever it is that is causing you such distress,"_ JARVIS reported.

"Does that mean you count as dead?" Tony asked shakily as he approached the edge of the world. The remains of the bifrost machine loomed, an aged relic of a great civilization now gone. A civilization that had been great right up until about an hour ago, Jesus.

_"It more likely means you are incapable of programming me a soul."_

Below him, the water atomized as it fell. Droplets broke into particles, particles broke apart into bits too small for the suit's sensors to pick up. On the macro scale it should have shown up as mist, but instead, beneath them there was only the black sun, sinking into endless darkness. The water entered the void and ceased to be.

"Scandalous lies, JARVIS, your programming is sublime – I should know, I wrote it myself. Heads up; let's _not_ check out what's on the flip side. Or send this thing over the edge..." he approached the machine warily from the underside. An enormous crystal sat at the centre of it – was that its central heart? It was connected to four fin-like structures, which looked like they could be moved about. The fin nearest to the bridge side was smouldering, half of it missing. "Scan everything," Tony ordered, the magnitude of the task making his heart sink.

The chance to get his hands on alien tech and figure out how it worked should have been inspiring. It should have had him throwing a ticker-tape parade in celebration. Instead, alone in a dying world, where an impossible creature went around chowing down on corpses, it became daunting. He was on a time limit numbered in days if not hours, facing a problem that even he might need a lifetime to solve.

The initial results popped up and he cursed. The crystal was definitely important: Nanoscopic runic structures were engraved on it hundreds of layers deep – and likely further, but the suit's abilities only went so far. It was lucky that they could pick up that much at all – but he'd designed these particular sensors with the idea in the back of his head that it might be nice to be able to easily and surreptitiously scan in the full details of any hardware that he'd run across. Unfortunately, while human chips tended to be limited to a generally two-dimensional layout, the bifrost definitely wasn't. Even without counting the 3D layout, the space covered was enormous – the central crystal was metres across. "Great," Tony said. "JARVIS, spot-scan – look for patterns, give me samples, we're not gonna be able to store all of this."

The central crystal was just the beginning. He carefully peeled back the paneling on one of the intact fin structures and found more crystals, more 3D runes, more _everything_. He rolled the protective cover back into place and went after the others, finding to his dismay that they were all different – there were _patterns_, definitely, but at a glance he could see unique variations everywhere, and that didn't bode well for trying to repair the broken one. And he hadn't even gotten inside the thing yet. Not to mention what might be inside the walls... and if he ripped off the panelling on there, he might break the damn thing even further.

But he had the suit – the _powered_ suit, which meant, really, that with time and enough raw materials, he could make an entire lab; start by reprogramming the repulsors, rely on the stabilizing agents, and he could do intricate work just as well as he could build himself a forge. Raw materials he might be able to find in the ruins... if he could do so before the world finished ending. Time... that was a problem. Even setting aside the need for food and fresh water, the Níðhöggr was still back on the mainland. Just the thought of flying back in that direction made his stomach twist with fear.

"Shit," he mumbled to himself, as he kept going through his scans. He'd watched Loki so carefully, but – well, Pepper sometimes watched him play with holograms – she sometimes played with them herself – but she had no clue how the interface was built. She didn't need to know – he did.

Going inside was a delicate operation. He didn't want to set foot on the structure – he didn't want to be the straw that sent it over the edge, not when he still hadn't figured out what was holding it up in the first place. Balancing carefully on the repulsors, he stripped the paneling on the central column, on the floors, taking scans. Whatever had blown a hole through the side had also burned gashes into the floor, fusing bits of crystal and metal into useless lumps.

He needed to go back and get Heimdall's sword. At the rate the water was rising – or rather, the rate the ground was sinking, since the bifrost appeared to be no closer to the water than it had been when he'd looked over the edge of the rainbow bridge scant hours earlier – Heimdall's corpse was probably already covered, and he'd just have to hope the weapon hadn't washed away. "Shit," he muttered again.

_"Scans are as complete as data storage capacity will allow, sir, but without a basic understanding of this technology, a great many calculations will be required before I can even begin to hypothesize a starting point for repairs,"_ JARVIS informed him.

"Uh-huh, you and me both," Tony muttered. He would probably be quicker at putting it together than JARVIS – although JARVIS was definitely smart, he thought _differently_, in a way that hindered his ability to make broad, intuitive jumps, at the payoff of being able to spend a truly obscene amount of attention on details. But it would still be a monumental task... and one that he might be able to lessen, if Asgardians had anything like libraries. Which, if they existed, would be back on the mainland.

He had to do it sooner or later. Tony took a deep breath, in and out, and then said, "Bring up Heimdall's last location on the HUD. Might as well pick up his sword on the way."

* * *

One library had survived. Barely. Whether it would be of any use or not... well, the jury was still out on that.

For such an advanced civilization, the Asgardians seemed to enjoy over-much an extremely inefficient, overly grandiose (and this was _him_ thinking it) lifestyle. Oh, they had the bifrost machine, and other technological marvels – the Destroyer was proof of that, as were the occasional other odds and bobs that Tony ran across – but they didn't seem to have computers like humans did, for the storing of data. They didn't even have books. They had _scrolls_.

Unless there _were_ actual computers, and he just couldn't find them. Tony wasn't even certain that he hadn't wandered into the children's section, or some sort of collection made for the equivalent of ninety-year-old grandmothers who thought that the internet was the work of the devil, because he couldn't read any of the damn things. Apparently, the Allspeech was extremely literal: it did_ not_translate to the written form. Instead they used a script which, surprise surprise, looked very similar to Old Norse – a pitifully two-dimensional versions of the runes that made up the bifrost machine.

Tony was brilliant, he really was, but even he wasn't able to learn an entire language in a night – thankfully. He was pretty sure there _were_ people who could do that, but they were the type of savants who had issues that made _his_ issues look like a 250-word article: short and sweet. French, Italian, and Spanish were mixed up in his childhood, along with the Latin that his tutors had always pressed him to learn; German he'd picked up the first time he'd gone on a race-car-building spree. Japanese had taken him a couple of weeks of living in Tokyo, while Russian had been an ill-fated attempt to see if he was any better at literature analysis if he tried it in the original language of some of the finest masters of science fiction (answer: definitely not). Dari he'd picked up slowly, here and there, as the Middle East had moved from middling to high on the government's list of military threats. So sure, he could learn Asgardian, or whatever it was called – but it would take weeks. A far cry from the shortcut he'd been hoping for.

Even worse was the way the city seemed to be crumbling in on itself. He'd run across no one living, and the ruins seemed to be slowly but constantly collapsing in on themselves. The meagre light the stars provided was barely enough to see by – the arc reactor provided better light, but made him feel exposed, like a target in the dark – which he was.

JARVIS kept him appraised on the dropping external temperature, but the cold didn't seem to be helping slow the collapse – the ocean held too much salt to freeze just yet. Nor did the cold preserve anything else. He'd run across a few private chambers, occasionally with meals still left out. The food on the plates had already begun rotting, and was covered over with molds that died even as he watched. Likewise, the water was dark and toxic. A desalinization machine might make the ocean water drinkable – but he had no materials to fab the membranes.

He'd die of thirst within days.

There was simply no _time_ to try to learn Old Norse. Desperately, he went back to his scans, projecting the results up against half-broken walls and letting his brain leap from thought to thought, drawing parallels and connections. After a while, the patterns seemed to burn themselves into his head, but they made no sense: he couldn't see any fundamental underlying structure that would make the runes mean anything. In conventional human computing, everything boiled down to zero or one, on or off, and that was the basic block from which everything else sprung – but there seemed to be no common denominator between the runes. Taken by themselves, they were meaningless.

He picked up Heimdallr's sword from where it had been sitting beside him and threw it at the wall in disgust. The wall fared poorly, and the sword clattered to a stop on the floor of the next room over. Even if he could repair the systems – if, if, if – he had no fucking clue where he was pointing the portal, anyway. It was hopeless, pointless – he'd be dead too soon, just one more corpse among all the rest.

"FUCK!" Tony shouted into the emptiness. The ruined hallways echoed it back to him, and then a few seconds later, his voice bounced back from the soot-coated mountains. There was no other noise, other than the constant, never-ending sound of water rushing forward, rushing over, drawing in every ruined building and dragging it down into the depths. He'd die of thirst, and then his body would drown. Tony fell to his knees and punched the ground, because after all this time, all that 'facing your fears' bullshit, all his attempts to get past it, past _everything_, he was going to drown. He was never going to get home to Pepper – Pepper might already be dead. Pepper, and Rhodey, and Steve; Happy; Natasha and Clint and even goddamned Fury – Thor was already dead, Tony had seen him die, seen his body be taken by the water.

He slumped forward and stared at the ground. Nothing came to him – no brilliant ideas, no genius. He was in over his head, and there was no way out that he could see.

"Fuck," he whispered, just to JARVIS and himself this time.

_"Sir..."_ JARVIS said back, low and quiet and unsure. Oh, god, JARVIS. He was going to die and then JARVIS would be stuck with his corpse, and all the other corpses, completely alone. Unless the power ran out – unlikely, unless he used it up on purpose – or the universe imploded, JARVIS would be alone until he decided to shut himself down, the closest thing he had to suicide. Tony could do it now – shut him down – take the terrible burden from him –

"Sorry, kiddo," Tony mumbled to him. He couldn't do it – not yet. JARVIS didn't say anything. Maybe he'd given up, too – he had to know the odds, he'd have known them before Tony did. They sat there together in the dark, listening to the waves and the occasional crash and crack of ruins falling down.

Footsteps echoed through the broken library.

Tony roused himself long enough to check the sensory data that JARVIS was feeding him. Whoever it was, they were already dead, just as all the denizens of Helheim had been – thermal imaging confirmed that. They probably weren't even aware of his presence. The dead he'd met so far had been pretty wrapped up in their own issues, although he was willing to admit that his sample size wasn't statistically significant. He looked up, though, when the footsteps came close enough for the owner to be standing in the pool of light given off by the suit's reactor.

"Took me a while to find you," Steve said, smiling crookedly. "Sorry."

His hair was still the same blond as before, but his skin... his skin had gone pale, drained of all colour, and somehow it looked _so much worse_ on Steve than it had on any of the others. His eyes were grey instead of blue, and though the waxy sheen of death had not yet settled entirely into his skin, Tony could see its beginnings.

Tony let himself curl inward and rest his head in his hands. And here he'd thought that Steve had escaped Loki – but he hadn't. Not in the end.

"I had to keep dodging this dragon," Steve said, gesturing to indicate the size of it. He joined Tony on the floor, settling in to sit next to him without any of his customary grace – had death stolen that from him, too? What else had it taken? Something _essential_, if he wasn't flipping out about the Níðhöggr. "It flies around snatching up corpses. You shouldn't just be sitting here in the dark, Tony, you make an excellent target. I caught sight of you miles away."

"It doesn't matter," Tony said quietly.

Steve looked at him sharply, and then set his jaw. When he spoke, it was with the measured air of someone who had come up with several possible answers and had to discard the first few as being over-emotional. "It matters to me."

"You're dead."

"Yeah. My friends – uh, they got my soul back into my body, but there was a fight, a battle..." Steve trailed off, shrugged. "I lost. It was a good cause. After, though – everything started collapsing. I think I was supposed to end up in some other realm, but it got squished into this one. That was how the women I met put it, anyway, and they looked like they'd know."

Tony stared listlessly at the wall. He was having a conversation with a corpse. He'd been having a lot of conversations with corpses, recently, which really ought to have been a clue that this was never going to end well. He wondered if the women that Steve had met were corpses, too – they probably were, if JARVIS hadn't picked up anything on the thermal imaging by now. Moving or not, everyone here was dead and soon to drown – him included.

"So. You got a plan to get yourself home?" Steve prodded, when Tony didn't say anything after a while. Tony shook his head, electing to remain mute. It was easier than trying to find the right words.

"You're just gonna sit in the dark, then. You're gonna give up," Steve challenged. "Come on, that's not like you. The man I know – he doesn't give up. He fights to the bitter end."

"This _is_ the bitter end, Steve," Tony said dully.

"Not for you," Steve shot back emphatically. "Tony – I know I'm dead." He looked away for a minute, and when he went on, his voice was quieter. "I know because I've lost something. But you haven't. You can't give up. You can still get home – you can still make a difference."

Tony closed his eyes. "No, I can't. I don't have the time. Even if the dragon doesn't kill me, or drive me insane, in a couple days I'm gonna be dead of dehydration anyway."

"Then these are a pretty important couple of days for you, aren't they?"

Tony snorted. "The last time somebody said that to me, I actually had a breath of a chance. I've got nothing, Steve. I can't figure out how to rebuild a fourth of the bifrost system in a couple of days – I won't even be able to figure out where the technical manuals are in a couple days, if they even exist. I'm good. I'm a genius, I'm one of the smartest guys on Earth, or off of Earth, but some things are just impossible."

"I'd've thought you'd rather spend your last days figuring out what you could, rather than just sitting around here in the dark," Steve said, and if there had been the slightest note of disappointment in his voice, Tony would have punched him – even if he was dead. But when he looked over at Steve, there was only sincere compassion, and a deep earnestness. Steve – expected him to do better._Wanted_ him to do better. But Steve wasn't judging him for falling short of those expectations, and somehow, that cut him right down to the marrow, deeper than judgement ever had.

Tony huffed a laugh. "Yeah, you got a point there," he admitted, hauling himself to his feet and holding out a hand to Steve. Steve took it and let himself be hauled to his feet. He felt... oddly light, and Tony frowned. Everything was lighter in the suit, of course – if he hadn't had practice at the whole 'interaction without tactile feedback' thing from years of working in 3D holograms, he'd probably have broken everything he tried to pick up the first few times. But the suit's sensors confirmed: Steve's mass was barely 48% of what it should have been. At that mass he should have been – well, he _was_ dead, but he should have looked like somebody who'd died from starvation, and maybe lost a limb besides. Tony closed his eyes before his brain could decide to start looking for whatever wound _had_ killed Steve. He didn't want to know.

"Anything I can do to help?" Steve asked, with that same earnestness. The answer was... not a resounding 'no'. Even if this Steve had had years to get caught up to the future, unless he'd picked up a couple of doctorates in that time, he'd be useless for any of the technical stuff... but if his abilities matched Rogers', then he should have exceptional pattern recognition.

Tony pulled out his tiny screwdriver and sketched runes in the dirt covering the floor. The 3D runes that made up the bifrost weren't strictly layered – they were arranged more like a tangled knot of string than an onion. But there were occasional patterns and repetitions, things that seemed more important. If Asgardian organization was anything like human – which, from the evidence, it _wasn't_, but Tony had to start somewhere – then these patterns wouldn't be the subject of titles, but there would have to be scrolls containing them – if scrolls on such a topic existed. And if he could figure out what the overall structure was, he could interpolate a lot of the details. The runes that he sketched were the 2D versions, which lost variety and subtlety, but he'd take what he could get.

"See if you can find any patterns that look like these," he explained, as he sketched out a paragraph's worth of runes. "They're the important ones. And if you can find anything that's _not_ in runes, anything readable, that would be cool, too."

"On it," Steve said, clapping him on the shoulder and going over to the shelves of scrolls. Tony watched him for a while out of the corner of his eye. Like he'd hoped, Steve didn't seem to take very long at all to scan each scroll, unrolling one as fast as he could before rerolling it and setting it aside – the best manual substitute for a search program Tony could have hoped for.

He went back to studying the scans. The structure still was baffling – it should have been a pretty sculpture, and no more. If this was the base level, then there was nothing _connecting_ all the runes, no way for any of them to _mean_ anything –

Hold on. Back up.

If. He'd thought that it was because the runes were nanostructures. Each was small enough that the fine details became hazy but while – Asgardian technology might be _different_, there was a point where you got so small and just couldn't go any smaller. So he'd assumed the runes were the base (because if they weren't, he was completely fucked on trying to repair it) – but clearly, they couldn't be. They made no sense without a background setup... which wasn't present.

Unless it was. Asgardians were pan-dimensional – why couldn't their technology be? And okay, that meant he might still be fucked in attempting to fix anything, unless that base – the hardware, then, while the portion he'd scanned was the software equivalent – hadn't taken as much damage.

"It's code," he said aloud. "It's – holy shit." The sheer _size_ of the program was dizzying – larger than any human, even him, could hope to comprehend. What had it all been _for_? What did the bifrost machine need?

Power, obviously, but that was easy. Navigation would be a critical issue, especially given the implications by the Foster Theory that while the distance the traveller crosses would be much less, the distances the wormhole covered would be exponentially greater (and in a great many more dimensions) – and they'd need to be calculated down to the micrometre. Any variances above the tolerance level, and the wormhole would simply fail to open. But once the navigation was known, the bending of space time was – well, that had to be the _actual_ hardware portion of the machine; the navigation code would have to include directions on the power allocation.

Generating the nav calculations in the short time that the bifrost took to open a wormhole would need the sort of processing power that _maybe_ extremely advanced quantum computing could provide– but there'd been no sign of any sort of quantum computing that he'd seen. So, was that also 'elsewhere'... or did they simply store the pre-calculated numbers hard-copy? There were only limited places that they seemed to want to go – the bifrost didn't open up just anywhere, or they wouldn't have had to spend a couple hours hiking through Jǫtunheimr. But this was the 'central' universe, and even if Heimdallr had said that there _weren't_ infinite universes connected to this one, they'd still have... a _lot_ of data.

"Tony? You figured it out?" Steve asked, rolling up another scroll and putting it back on the shelf.

"Maybe," Tony said, as possibilities spooled out in his thoughts. If the bifrost program was mostly data, then he might not have a much to fix as he'd thought – if it had only been part of the 'hard drives' that had been destroyed, leaving the main program intact. If, if, if – but it had to be data. Tony had seen Selvig's program for calculating a wormhole, and while it had certainly been complex, for sheer size it had nothing on the amount of data it generated. Even with SHIELD's baby quantum computers working on it, it was years away from having finished its run for a single, fairly short wormhole – they'd been counting on breakthroughs in quantum computing to move up the finish date.

He reorganized the scans, trying to estimate how much data could be represented by the runes – more than could be represented in 2D, certainly, but there too few variations for each to be an individual word. If he could figure out what the data points looked like, then he could put together what a complete set of wormhole data looked like, and start eliminating them – and start figuring out where the actual program was stored.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Níðhöggr's soar into view, one of its arcing wings visible through the gaps in the library's ruined walls. Was it bigger than it had been before, or merely closer? Impossible to tell, when its geometry shouldn't have been able to exist in the first place. The weight of wrongness overwhelmed him, crushed him to the floor and left him gasping for breath; he could feel his mind straining to comprehend how the wing could be a Cesario fractal but still smooth, still three-dimensional – or more –

"Tony? Tony, can you hear me?" He came back to himself to find Steve crouched over him, looking concerned. Of course the Níðhöggr wouldn't affect Steve – he was dead. Dead, and lacking... something.

"I'm fine," Tony grunted, pulling himself into a seated position. He felt like he should be sitting in a small crater, but he wasn't – he'd just fallen over, not even with any particular force. When Steve still looked worried, Tony offered a smile, and tried to let it come through in his voice as he said, "You were right. Sitting around, waiting for the end – not my style. This is... better."

Steve rested a hand on the armour's shoulder for a long moment, still looking worried, but when Tony just tilted his head innocently, Steve seemed to give in. "Okay," Steve allowed. "Just – let me know if I can do anything."

"Sure thing, Cap," Tony agreed, pulling himself back together and re-engaging in the brainstorming session with JARVIS. They argued over which segments of runes were important – and here was the benefit of working with someone who fundamentally thought differently; they could attack the problem from so many more directions than Tony could working alone. Occasionally Tony called Steve over and sketched out new sequences for him to find.

Until, finally, they hit pay dirt: Steve found a few partial fragments of what they'd been looking for, put together in more ordered ways.

"Bingo," Tony crowed, as JARVIS scanned the information and numbers appeared on the HUD display besides the runes – rough estimations for possible value ranges. Then it was simply a matter of cross-referencing and narrowing until they had, if not an understanding of the Asgardian written language, a rough idea of how their coordinates worked. It wasn't anything like any human system – either the scale didn't fully correspond to numbers, or their numerical system was ridiculously complex.

_"Sir, the core program may be stored inside the crystal understructure, beyond the distance my scans can penetrate,"_ JARVIS reminded Tony gently as he started grouping together data clusters, tagging them as individual wormholes. Thanks to the idiosyncrasies of the coordinates system, they were much larger than they should have been – were the Asgardians just being redundant, or was there something he was missing?

"Uh-huh," Tony said, pausing to think. "Bring up Selvig's stuff, will you?"

JARVIS was a bit pedantic about uploading relevant information to the mission, in case they got cut off from communications. He couldn't upload _all_ of his resources, of course – JARVIS was spread out across various server farms, and there simply wasn't room in the suit. But there were things that it was good to have immediately on hand, and as Selvig's notes and papers – and, oh glory be, his programs – began to scroll across the HUD, Tony was reminded yet again of just how many times JARVIS' over-preparedness had saved his life.

_"I live to serve,"_ JARVIS said dryly. Oh. Had he said that aloud?

Well, his pedantry might even save them this time. Tony opened up a new document and had the HUD project a virtual workspace in front of him – with the suit matching his movements to the projection, he could type just as well as he could at an actual keyboard. The first thing he needed to do was get JARVIS to start an interpretation program, to try to figure out where the wormhole data sets were going – it would take too long to run, probably, but he had to try. Then he got started on Selvig's program, taking it to pieces and making it better, designing it to work with taking data from an Asgardian source. He could put it on the suit arc reactor's tiny little computer, hook the thing up to provide power... and he might actually be able to get somewhere.

Steve wandered back and sat down beside him at some point. After a minute, Tony looked over and saw that he was smiling. "Something up, Cap?" he asked casually.

"You look strange when you do that," Steve said, but he didn't sound mocking about it – well, maybe a little teasing, but it was friendly. Unexpectedly, this made guilt churn in Tony's stomach. Steve was... Steve was dead, just hanging around and trying to get Tony back home, even though it was completely futile. How would _Steve_ want to spend his last days? "But we should get under better cover now that I've finished going through these scrolls. There're too many holes in these walls."

Tony blinked. "You've... gone through all of them?" he asked, then rolled his eyes at his own inanity. Steve wouldn't have said it if he hadn't. He scrambled to his feet, looking out over the ruined library – it wasn't _enormous_, compared to, well, everything else on Asgard, but it was still of Asgardian design, which meant it mandatorily pretty large. "You've – JARVIS, how long have we been at this?"

_"Twenty-two hours, four minutes,"_ JARVIS recited dutifully, before adding, with some hesitation, _"Knowing the current circumstances, I assumed normal protocol did not apply and did not inform you of the twelve-hour mark."_

"I – twenty-two hours?" Tony asked – wow, apparently he was just repeating everything today, where was his brain? Twenty-two hours might explain the stupidity, except –

- Tony didn't feel tired at all. He felt _stiff_, like he'd been hunched over in the same position for a couple of hours, but just standing was making the feeling fade. He didn't feel hungry, or thirsty – he didn't even feel caffeine-deprived, and that right there was fucked up, because he'd not had coffee in two days, he shouldn't have been able to go for twenty-two hours without starting to flag –

"Tony?" Steve asked, looking at him in concern. "Are you okay?"

"I – " He broke off, putting one hand to the arc reactor. Loki's words floated through his mind: _You will wander the ruins, eternal. You will know that _you did this.

_Shit._ What had Loki _done_ to him?

He swallowed, hard. "I'm fine, Cap. Let's get out of here."

"You're clearly _not_ fine," Steve argued, even as he turned and started heading for the door. Tony detoured, briefly, to nab Heimdall's sword from where he'd thrown it. Although it was just as dark as it hard been in the library – which was to say, Tony's arc reactor was the only source of light – Steve led the way with unerring accuracy. Tony wondered if it was the supersoldier serum lending him enhanced eyesight, or – considering that he'd managed to navigate the darkness outside – some sort of thing you got when you died.

Which apparently wasn't something that was going to happen to him as long as he remained here. _Shit._ He didn't even know why he wasn't happy about this – he _needed_ more time, to be able to repair the bifrost. Even if the programming was entirely intact, the repairs to the outer shell would take a while, given the machining problems alone. If he couldn't figure out how to use the sword (and that seemed likely, if it was also some pan-dimensional thing; scans hadn't come up with anything that would set it apart as remarkable, not even any runes) then he'd need to write an interface that could also play nice with Asgardian programs when he still only had a rough grasp of their coordinate systems. Machining _anything_ was going to be a problem, if everything kept crumbling around them –

"Don't you want to go back home?" he asked, abruptly, instead of answering Steve's question.

"I'm dead," Steve answered easily. He seemed... remarkably at peace with that, Tony thought, staring at him. Or maybe it wasn't that – it wasn't peace, it was blankness. He just didn't care. Had that been what he'd meant when he'd said he'd lost something – the concerns of the living? But then why was he still hanging around Tony? "Here, this is the room I found when I scouted earlier. Solid walls, no lines of sight – "

"You went scouting earlier?"

Steve frowned at him. "I told you I was. You said you were fine and told me to go ahead."

He had? One of _those_ types of conversations, then. Really, why did people always assume that just because his mouth was engaged, his brain cared at all about what they were saying? Especially people who presumably knew what he was like when presented with an engineering problem. "Uh, so I guess your version of Tony doesn't do the whole 'lalala-sure-I'm-listening' thing," he said sheepishly.

"If I'd known that you were that zoned out, I wouldn't have left you alone," Steve said. The frowny-face hadn't disappeared. "But I thought I'd better find something before you fell over. You're going to need sleep at some point, especially with no food or water – "

"Uh." Tony looked down and away, studying the walls of the room that Steve had found. It was a picture of opulent ruin – the walls might be stable, but the tapestries looked as if they'd been set upon by a horde of locusts. Or was that termites? What ate tapestries, anyway? "About that. I – don't actually need sleep. Or food, apparently. Loki did something to me, I dunno what."

Steve stared at him. "Put the faceplate up," he demanded, and the moment Tony complied, Steve set a hand against his forehead – a hand cold enough that Tony jerked away immediately. The feeling of dead flesh against his skin made him grimace, but he masterfully held back from gagging.

If he noticed – and he probably had – Steve didn't say anything. Tony didn't know if this was because Steve was being kind to Tony or to himself. It was probably a mix of both, he supposed. "You're too warm to be dead," Steve asserted a moment later, and Tony blinked. The thought hadn't even occurred to him. "And you still have colour." He gestured at Tony's face with the hand that he'd used to check his temperature.

How Steve could see _colour_ by the shallow blue glow of the arc reactor was – totally not a mystery. Or maybe Tony just couldn't see any colour because there was none to be had; Steve himself was washed-out and pale. "I think JARVIS would have noticed if I was dead," Tony objected half-heartedly. Steve rolled his eyes, likely catching that Tony hadn't specified whether _he_ would have noticed. That's what he had JARVIS for, after all – social security number, blood alcohol content, metaphysical state; JARVIS was good for everything.

_"Indeed, sir,"_ JARVIS murmured in his ear.

"Next time I'll be sure to shake you to make sure you're listening to me," Steve said dryly. The frown was beginning to clear up, though, so Tony counted it a victory. Steve wandered away into the dark – when Tony flipped the faceplate down, he could again follow his movements again on the HUD; apparently, he was inspecting the half-eaten tapestries. "It's probably a good idea to be under cover anyway. I saw that dragon again when I went scouting – I think it's gotten bigger."

"If it keeps eating corpses, I guess it would," Tony said. The words sat sourly in his mouth, and he pulled up status updates on the codes he had running. JARVIS had – Tony took a closer look. "Oh, well done," he murmured approvingly. JARVIS had cracked Asgardian numbers – it wasn't that the numerical system was complex, it was that their way of expressing it was the most_inefficient_ possible. Seriously, numbers were numbers, Tony _loved_ numbers, but they didn't need odes written to each and every one – and either the Asgardians were doing that, or they were writing out words as numbers and storing those in their coordinate systems. It was like a GPS system that claimed that someone was should turn left at _thirty-six point two nine _latitude and _fifty-two point eight four _longitude, except in eleven dimensions to ten significant figures on a route nearly as fractured as the Níðhöggr's spine should have been. Did they not have _numerals_?

No wonder they needed so much storage space, such huge computational engines, if _all of their data_ was like this, _all_ of their numbers, even the ones they were using in calculations – Jesus, what a waste of time and energy.

"Asgardians like to be formal," Steve said. Tony hadn't meant to say that aloud, but, well, he didn't care if Steve heard, anyway. "I'm glad you've got a lead."

"Uh-huh," Tony muttered. "It just means – it means I fix the thing well enough to run it, and I've got a list of directions. No idea what's actually _at_ any of the locations they lead to – all the directions are relative to here, and I've got fuck-all as far as where 'here' is." He waved a gauntleted hand expansively – although given Asgard's current state, maybe he should use some smaller gesture. "And that's if those places are still where they were – if you're right about worlds collapsing in on themselves... there might not be anywhere to go."

The armour's voice protocols wouldn't let Steve hear how dry his throat was as he said that. Dying here, in this wreck of a realm, was frightening. Being stuck here forever...

Once upon a time, he'd thought that immortality might be nice. To be fair, he'd been dying at the time.

"Hey. You'll get it," Steve said, abandoning his perusal of the tapestries to come back over and clap a hand on Tony's shoulder. It was just as ridiculous as it had been when they'd still been in Helheim, and Steve hadn't been able to stop being so touchy-feely all the time. But this time, it wasn't strange. It was just... reassuring.

"Of course I will, I'm Tony Stark," he scoffed, letting his arrogance buoy him. But it didn't hold up much longer than the quip, and he swallowed, hard. This was Afghanistan all over again, desperately trying to work out the miniaturized arc reactor equations in his head even as he was already throwing together a prototype, because he had to do _something_. Invention was never a guaranteed end-game, not then and not now – he'd discarded too many ideas over the years to be unaware of _that_.

"Well," said Steve slowly, "We could ask those women I met earlier. They seemed to know about what was happening to the worlds."

Tony looked up sharply. How had he not caught that? He'd heard what Steve had said but had focused on the irrelevant part, the biological state of the women, and not the importance of _what they had said_. See, this was why despair was a bad look for him – it made him stupid. "That is – that is an excellent idea. You think you can find them again?"

"They can't have gone too far, and you can fly." Steve shrugged. "I don't think going out there is a good idea, not with that dragon flying around, but if we need their help..."

"Point me in the right direction, then," Tony said, heading for the door. His footfalls felt lighter than they had since before Asgard died. "I'll try to avoid irritating your mother-hen instincts by staying out too long after curfew."

"Splitting up is still a bad idea." Steve shook his head. "I'm coming with you."

Tony made a face, hidden behind the helmet's mask. "Uh, how? Unless you've learned to fly. Bit awkward for me to be carrying you – you're a bit big for a damsel in distress, and carrying you around by the scruff won't exactly be comfortable for anything longer than a boost."

"You give me lifts all the time," Steve said, not breaking stride. "My version of you, I mean. I'll show you."

* * *

Despite Tony's predictions, it was not completely terrible. Steve stepped onto Tony's foot, wrapped an arm around his neck, hanging over his shoulders, and he wrapped an arm around Steve's waist to keep him secure – leaving him readily available to catch Steve if he fell. When Tony tilted forward for horizontal flight, Steve flipped around him and onto Tony's back (and wasn't it just lucky that the back jet-suit repulsors disengaged), clinging to his neck and leaving both of Tony's hands free for flight stabilization.

It was still incredibly awkward. Flying with a heavy, lop-sided weight took some getting used to – Tony nearly crashed them into a nearby wall the first time they tried the 'going horizontal' manoeuvre. Nor could he fly at anywhere near the supersonic speeds that he was used to; Steve could take a lot more punishment than any normal human, but he didn't even have a helmet, for Christ's sake. And Tony didn't want to test the limits of his limpet-ness.

Also, he was essentially giving Steve a horizontal piggy-back ride, and that was never going to be not awkward, ever.

Fortunately, as they rose above the ruins of the palace, Steve pointed at a beacon – a bonfire, far off in the distance. "That was the direction I came from. That could be them." He didn't bother to shout – apparently he knew full well that even in full flight, the armour's audio could easily pick up what he was saying.

The long-range sensors resolved the scene. Three women stood about the fire, their heat signatures so closely blended with the surroundings that the HUD barely picked them up in IR. More dead people; great. The visible spectrum showed that they were young – or had been – and were no more recently deceased than Steve. In life they might have been intimidating, with vibrancy and youth and, oh, being two and a half metres tall – but death had diminished that.

"Hold tight, cowboy," Tony said, adjusting the output audio volume upward, because Steve didn't have the benefit of sensors – a crying shame, sensors were awesome. He took off toward the distant firelight, his whole body thrumming with tension. Back out in the open, the threat of the Níðhöggr weighed down on him; it was a relief that the flight wasn't longer. When they drew nearer to the fire, the women looked up at them, but didn't seem surprised.

"Welcome to our fire, Captain, Man of Iron," the middle woman spoke as Tony drifted gently toward the ground. Her voice was deep for a woman – on the same register as Cate Blanchett's, lovely lady that she was. "We bring you tidings, at the end of the world."

Steve flipped around so that he could jump off, hitting the ground in a roll that, while economic, lacked the grace of the living. Tony was just glad that when he landed, he didn't have to worry about a passenger.

"You built the fire to signal us?" Steve asked. "Put it out. You'll bring the dragon." His tone had slipped into 'Captain America', more commanding and earnest than ought be possible – but unlike Rogers, it didn't have the note of fake bravado in it, revealing to any who cared to listen how uncomfortable and out of place the man really was. Steve had grown into his skin – or maybe it was just another side-effect of dying.

"The Níðhöggr will ignore us for now. We have magic enough left for that, if naught else," said the woman on the left. Her hair was as dark as midnight – the Arwen to Blanchett's Galadriel... if Galadriel had been a brunette. Her input wasn't reassuring. Nothing relating to the Níðhöggr could be reassuring. "We must speak with you, man of iron."

"If you tell me no man born of woman can kill me, I'm gonna say a) I'm not testing that, and b) Denmark sucks," Tony said flatly. He was tempted to aim a gauntlet at them, but he was pretty sure Steve would disapprove. "Boring, shitty climate – "

"Enough. Our time grows short," Blanchett cut him of.

"What's the rush?" Steve said. "You didn't seem in a hurry when we spoke before." Tony knew without looking at him that his eyes were narrowed in suspicion, even though his delivery was dead-pan.

"At that junction we still believed that the Tree of Life could be saved," the last woman finally spoke. Her hair was the lightest of the three's. Was he just imagining things, or could he see stars glimmering from her hair, as well? Was that why it was still light? "T'was our task to bring water from the Well of Urðr and pour it over Yggdrasil, that its branches might stay free of rot. But upon our return to the Well, we found it poisoned."

"Without its water, Yggdrasil will soon wither and die," said Arwen.

"So you see, the dead have no more time on this world than the few living, Captain," finished Blanchett.

The way they spoke - "You're the Fates," said Tony, then, "Wait, no, that's Greek. Uh. The norse equivalent." He supposed he ought to be grateful for that – weren't the Fates the ones who passed around an eyeball like a talking stick?

"We are the norns, yes," Blanchett confirmed.

"Or we were," noted her fair-haired sister – or were they sisters? Was that still Greek? "We determined the course of the tapestry that bound all lives, all realms, all fates together."

Tony snorted. He couldn't help himself. "Jesus. You were right, Steve. Fucking _magic._ Intent. You're why I didn't die in Helheim."

"It was our law that saved you then." Blondie's lips curled into a cold smile.

"As it is the remnant of our law that now tethers you to the ground. But our power is quickly fading. And we are reduced to begging the lynchpin of the Tree's destruction to be its saviour." Blanchett looked straight at Tony as she said this, her eyes seeming to pierce straight through the suit's faceplate and peer into his soul. Tony felt his blood chill.

"Tony didn't cause this," Steve said immediately.

Tony felt a rush of warm gratitude toward him – but it wasn't enough to chase away the cold that spread through him when Blondie said, "Stark did not cause this, but he was the _cause_: the instrument of Loki. In his youth, when his fate became known to him, Loki cast a spell reaching far and wide for a knife that he could use to cut through our web, the tapestry that binds all lives and realities together. After much time and toil, his spell brought him you, Man of Iron – from a realm so far that even we know it not; its fate is not ours to design, and as you come from outside of our power, so may you be used to break it. Hel saw this, when you landed at her feet, and attempted to destroy you – but she, like all of the guardians of the dead, may not destroy the unwilling lest she grow too powerful. Thus we decreed – and thus we doomed ourselves."

"She lied," Tony said. "She said - it was a favour – "

"She was the daughter of a liar, if not so mad as he. Once you were here," Blondie went on, "and he had confirmed your origin, Loki used your presence to poison the Well, weaving a spell to break the threads of our tapestry and turn them to follow your own myths. In doing so, he freed himself from the existence he should have had – and doomed all else."

"So all this," Tony gestured helplessly. "It all – I – " his voice broke off. He couldn't continue.

"Out of an infinite number of worlds, you were vulnerable at the instant Loki cast his spell," she said softly. "We knew not why, until we saw you, but it is plainly written upon your soul: you fell. He caught you."

Tony closed his eyes. This wasn't – he couldn't – oh, God. He'd tried to save Manhattan. He'd tried to keep Pepper safe. He'd knowingly committed genocide, but that had been against the Chitauri, that hadn't been – he hadn't meant –

_No. Nononono – _he hadn't _meant_ to destroy thousands of lives with his weapons, weapons in the wrong hands, but that didn't matter – what mattered was that he'd _done_ it. This was all on him.

_All of it._

"With Yggdrasil dead, all life, all of the universe, shall soon cease," Arwen picked up where Blondie had left off. "As this place sits at the heart of all others, it will pull in all of the other realms we have woven, and consume them. Those further out may have more time – but they will fall into the decay in the end."

Steve was the one to ask the obvious question. Tony still couldn't speak. "Can it be stopped?"

"It may be possible," Arwen allowed. "If the cycle of Ragnarok can be completed, before the Níðhöggr swallows all that remains of these realms, and moves on to other prey."

"Tell me how to stop him," Tony said. His throat felt as dry as dust.

"Loki wanders now beyond our ken," Blanchett said darkly. "For all that he brought about doom to these realms, he has escaped beyond even them. Perhaps he is now in a place such as your own realm, Stark, there to bring about yet more destruction."

"If Loki is slain, Ragnarok may yet complete," Arwen said, with a hint of cruelty as black as her hair.

Steve was frowning. "He's – like _you_ – a pan-dimensional alien. There're multiple copies of him – _a lot_ of copies. How are we supposed to kill someone like that – do we have to track down every last one of him?"

Ideas rose in Tony's mind, algorithms and windows into other worlds and methods of improved efficiency – but Arwen had a different idea. "That will not be necessary. Like the serpent he birthed, Loki is more easily killed than that – cut off the head, and the body will die."

"Kill the brain, the him from this realm," Tony muttered. Other ideas spun out feverishly from that starting point. He'd done this – he had to fix this. Failure was not an option, not when there was so much more than his own life at stake – there was _everything_ at stake. "Okay, then how do I find _him_?"

Blanchett shook her head. "We do not know."

"Loki's always had a taste for the personal," Steve put in, his eyes troubled. "He'll start on your world."

"Then how do I get home?" Tony demanded of the norns.

"We do not know," Blanchett said again, and Tony wanted to curse them, except that the irony of cursing the fates might _actually_ have been enough to kill him. "Your world lies beyond our sight." The one answer he needed most and they didn't have it. It fucking figured.

"Our time has ended," Blondie said, and for a moment he thought that she was just giving another excuse, before he noticed identical looks of alarm on all their faces. Alarm muted by death, but alarm all the same.

"The Níðhöggr is coming," whispered Arwen.

"Go," said Blanchett.

Tony screwed his eyes shut – he wanted to curse them even more, now. Steve had already wrapped an arm about him, reading to be carried – he was completely willing to abandon the three women, and that. That wasn't Captain America. That was wrong. Even the women cared, at least the tiniest amount – or did they only care about their creation being unraveled? What did you lose when you died – what had Steve lost?

"Tony, they're already dead. We have to go – you can't even stand the sight of that thing, you can't fight it!" Steve said, but it wasn't logic that made Tony take off. It was fear. The bubbling pit of self-hate that he kept locked in the back of his mind grew just a bit larger – but it wasn't enough to make him go back.

There were three solid walls between him and the Níðhöggr by the time its enormous maw finally appeared, only for an instant before it vanished again, but Tony saw it anyway. What use were walls against the physically impossible? Its head was the size of a small hill; he couldn't see them, but he imagined the norns falling into its gaping mouth, resigned and afraid all at once. Tony shut his eyes and prayed to a god he didn't believe in while Steve hovered over him, looking worried. Looking dead.

"You need to fix the bifrost and find a destination," Steve said grimly.

"Help me up," Tony mumbled, tottering away once he was on his feet again. He grimaced and stiffened his resolve, then in turn used that to stiffen his limbs. This was all on him. He had to fix it – but fuck, he was an engineer. Fixing things? Not a new concept for him. "We need to fly out to the bifrost machine. I need more scans."

Out at the edge of the world, it was easy for time to begin blurring together. Tony's thoughts were a mess – scanning, deciphering, and programming, his body sitting on the slanted floor of the bifrost machine while Steve prowled about and stared out at the dying universe. At some point, the runes began to make more sense than they should have, and he vaguely began to get the idea that he ought to take a break – but what was the point? He didn't need to eat, or sleep – he didn't even need to shave. He dismantled the central column and bits of the suit, scavenging bits of internal circuitry as he built a control panel that he could actually use – because fuck pan-dimensional control systems anyway; Heimdall might have been fine with only his sword, but there was nothing special about the weapon in the three dimensions that Tony could see.

He made sure to put the armour back together afterward. It was the only protection that he had on those occasions when one of the Níðhöggr's wingtips stretched out into the sky and fractals broke in his brain and he had to hide from the sight behind Steve.

But for all that he could rip non-essential panelling off of the walls, cut them up with the suit's lasers, burn in new circuitry and weld them over the gap – the navigation problem eluded him. He could translate the coordinates into something understandable but they were all relative to Asgard, this Asgard, and he had no idea where this Asgard was. Even translating the coordinates was taking a stupid amount of time – and they were organized like a three-year-old decided to play fifty-two pickup with a million-card deck. Asgardian science might be cool, but their engineering _sucked_.

"I'm not looking for my Earth," Tony said at one point, when Steve had asked him something – he wasn't sure what. Quite possibly Steve had been asking Tony his opinion on Mets vs. Yankees, but he hadn't been paying attention. Steve talked a lot – Tony knew he was poor company, too much wrapped up in the math and the symbols and how they'd started to become one and the same. "Heimdall said they don't have it. I'm looking for any place that might get me a bit closer – figuratively speaking." He finished with his current plate – the eighth of nine – and left its edges to cool, pulling up his calculations while he waited – once it was cold, he'd need to do some detailed work on it before he could attach the last layer.

Steve made encouraging noises, so Tony kept talking. "He talked about a cluster of realms – I want to get to the edge of that cluster, closer to whichever cluster _my _world belongs to, and see if we can hop over the border from there. Portal technology can't be all that common, but we know that the Asgardians aren't the only ones with it. Or just general dimension-breaching tech." He vaguely remembered Steve talking about someone named Reed Richards and a series of highly implausible adventures.

The algorithms he'd been trying out came up with nothing – another set of dead ends in his attempt to narrowing down his direction. He slumped, wanting to rub at his eyes – but the armour would make that gesture impossible, and he was always in the armour, now. Disgusting – but less so than he would have thought; apparently immortal stasis strong enough to stop his beard from growing also stopped him from becoming a mess of ew. Fortunate, because it wasn't like he could take the armour off – with the light had gone all of the heat.

With the algorithms abandoned his brain turned more of its attention outward, enough to understand Steve when he said, "I think time's being weird, like it was before." The urge rub at his eyes increased.

"Not the best person to be ask," he said instead. "There's no coffee – how do you expect me to be able to remember what day it is?" What did it matter, anyway, when there was no calendar? He hadn't asked JARVIS how long it had been for a while, instead marking the progression of time by watching Steve's skin steadily grow more corpse-like – despite how much he wanted to _not notice_. He wondered what Fury would think when he returned from another world with a zombie Captain America – that would be a reaction well worth watching.

"I think that's why it _is_ going weird," Steve said wryly. He looked – happy? Relieved? When had Tony last said something that made any sense to him? "When you don't notice it passing, it slips away."

"Trite," Tony muttered. He couldn't concern himself with the vagaries of time in a collapsing universe – not until they started fucking with his calculations. He just couldn't. It was a puzzle, an_awesome_ puzzle, but it was not one that he had time to investigate.

The eighth plate had cooled. He started on the circuitry, tuning out Steve once again, and the world vanished in a haze of metals and math. The circuitry grew, mirroring what he'd seen when he'd carefully dismantled the panelling on the opposite side. God bless Asgardians and their need to use exotic metals and rare materials on everything, even mere decoration – without the proper materials, this would have been _impossible_.

It still might be. Tony's world snapped back into focus as Steve's hand closed about his, making him yelp. The wrist lasers disengaged with little more than a thought, but still – "Shit, Steve, what the hell? Those could take your hand off wi – "

The Níðhöggr's tail lashed around the side of the world, past the now-silent waterfall, and slammed into the frozen sea. The sounds of ice breaking were discordant notes, destructive interference that amplified, triads that couldn't harmonize, a soprano singing base; a crack ran through the sea where the tail fell, all the way from the edge of the world up to the mainland – which was now much more distant than it had been. So much of the world had sunk beneath the waves, before they'd frozen from the cold. The tail scraped sideways and away, curving about once before it vanished beneath the rim of the world.

Tony came back to himself huddled over, Steve cradling him. "Sorry, sorry," Steve was saying softly. "I was looking over the edge and I saw it, but you didn't hear me. I didn't realize it had gotten that big – it's definitely growing."

"Nnfgh," Tony mumbled, trying to uncurl and stand up.

Steve had to help him to his feet, and then steady him. "You need to find a destination," he said, when Tony could finally stand on his own again.

"I've been trying!" Tony protested. His brain felt like soggy bread, like it had gotten whacked with the tail as well.

"Can't you just use the location that's furthest out?"

"That is an extremely shitty idea – that could be the opposite side of where we need to be!" Not that the coordinates translated very well into a linear vision of the universe, but that didn't mean that they couldn't end up further away than they'd started.

He'd nearly finished the circuitry before the Níðhöggr had appeared; now he went back to it with a renewed fervour. Some part of his brain acknowledged Steve trying to talk to him, but he didn't answer, too busy with new calculations, new proofs and algorithms to try to narrow down the navigation. The ninth plate was welded into place – easy – and he stepped back, satisfied.

It still didn't solve his biggest problem. He had no clue which set of coordinates to pick – if any of them.

"I don't think you've got time to figure it out," Steve said grimly. His eyes were distant, filmed with congealed death.

"What – "

The long neck of the Níðhöggr lifted above the mountains that had hidden it, and it was easily as large as them. Tony didn't know if he dropped the tools he'd been holding – he didn't know if he'd accidentally activated the hand lasers and hacked the bifrost machine in half. He was too busy trying to claw his eyes out – he fumbled for the suit releases, but JARVIS overrode him, locked everything into place, keeping the helmet on – there was thunder, the sound of annihilation, as the maw snaked forward and slammed into a mountain side, chewing through it with terrifying speed.

The terrible curve disappeared again behind the remaining mountains, its movements choppy and sinuous – it was breaking the space-time about it. No, not space-time – he'd have to call it something else. Foster hadn't given it a good name, had referred to it in boring terms that were easily forgotten, too interchangeable among theories about anything from the structure of the universe to economic reform. For such a creative scientist, her writing had an exceptionally dull vocabulary – perhaps because she was all too aware of the outlandishness of her ideas.

"Tony." Somebody was saying his name – Steve.

Steve was bent over him; his fingers felt behind Tony's neck and hit the release catch there. The faceplate opened for him - "JARVIS, you traitor," Tony mumbled, his breath frosting in the freezing air.

"You can't keep doing this," Steve said, voice grim and eyes worried. Those baby-blues were very good at conveying worry – disconcertingly so. "That thing's gotten too big – there's not going to be anywhere to hide from it. You have to pick a destination."

"If I pick the wrong one – "

" – then at least you'll be alive and sane. Tony, you have to _go_."

"Shit," Tony said, because it wasn't like he could argue with that. So far – so far he'd been lucky. He'd caught glimpses of the Níðhöggr, the curve of its spine, its tail; teeth and impossible wings; but if he stayed – the thought of seeing the thing in its entirety made his blood run cold. Even the idea was paralyzing, so badly that if he hadn't been trapped in the suit, he'd have been shaking.

"Okay, okay," he said, snapping down the faceplate and turning his tools on himself. "JARVIS, I'll wake you on the flip side." The arc reactor in his chest could power the suit – but it would be folly to leave it connected to the suit for the trip. Maybe the bifrost would drain it anyway, but if the drain had been due to exposure to the outside of the suit, then leaving it disconnected would give him access to a power source wherever they ended up.

It was the work of moments to remove the suit's arc reactor and disconnect the backup cables from the one in his chest – it took more time to cross the slanted floor of the bifrost; without power, without the suit's auto-balance, navigation on such an uneven surface was considerably more difficult. He kept expecting to slide downward, even with Steve hovering about, ready to catch him at any moment. "Just let me – " the arc reactor clicked into place.

The bifrost machine lit up. Sparks flashed at some of the welds – minute debris being dislodged by the power now running through them – but all of his repairs held, and nothing that he'd missed exploded. He let his breath out, and set it to aim at the furthest out set of coordinates that he'd translated. If he was going to gamble, he might as well gamble big.

"Right. Okay. After I hit this button, we need to stand in front of the entrance," he pointed.

"Tony." Steve shook his head. "I'm not going."

"What?" Tony blinked at him. His hand fumbled out and he hit the disconnect; power died. No sense wasting energy – he did _not_ want to have to build another particle accelerator. "Of course you're coming."

"I'm dead."

"That is a complete non-sequitur! So what?" Who _cared_ if he'd lost something in death or not – he was still walking around and talking, he could come along and be dead somewhere else.

"I'm dead and my home is dead. You came from somewhere outside this – someplace I can't go. You need to get home and keep your people alive," Steve said, and it sounded like an order.

Fuck that. "Fuck that," Tony said. "Like hell I'm going to – "

"You _have to_," Steve insisted, and the expression on his face was the exact same one that Yinsen had worn as he died. What was it that Phil had said, weeks, months ago? _Conviction._ "I don't exist in your world. I _can't_."

"You don't know that," Tony protested weakly. He was selfish, so selfish – he couldn't do this alone.

Steve overrode him again, his voice more gentle this time. "Yeah, I do."

"No. I killed you – it was my fault. I can't just leave you here. This world is _hell,_ Steve."

Steve stepped forward, hitting the release for the faceplate and flipping it up. "It's not so bad from my perspective, Tony. But you're alive – of course it's wrong to you. And that's why you need to go." He leaned forward and kissed Tony, briefly, mouth closed – although even that was enough to make Tony's skin crawl. He wished he could have taken comfort in it instead. Steve must have felt Tony shudder, because he stepped back quickly, flicking the faceplate down again before Tony could start developing frostbite. "See?"

"It's my fault you're dead," Tony said quietly, because after all he had done – or what another version of him had done; what did it matter, when that version was so obviously so close? When Steve had stepped in to _kiss _him – he couldn't abandon Steve. Not like this.

"It wasn't you – "

"It might as well have been me!" he cut Steve off, his voice raising. "It could have been me!"

"It _wasn't_," Steve insisted. "These are alternate worlds – in another world _I_ killed _you _– in another world you were a woman and we got married instead." Wait, Tony had time to think, why had _he_been the woman? Well, there was almost certainly another universe out there where it was the other way around, too. "It doesn't matter, Tony – even in my world, it wasn't your fault. You weren't involved. I know that now."

"But you're dead anyway!"

"Yes, I am," Steve said, oh-so-gently. "And I'm asking you – as a last request – to go. You have to get back to your home. You have to save them from whatever this is." He gestured out the far exit, at the enormous darkness that was all that remained of Asgard. There were so few stars in the night sky, now, that it was difficult to discern where the sky ended and the ruins began. "You believed those women. Loki isn't gonna stop here, and I don't think that dragon will either. If your world is still out there, you need to save it, and you can't do that if that thing drives you crazy first."

Tony bowed his head. _Damn_ Steve, anyway – he wanted to just grab the man and hit the switch, but in the unpowered armour he had no chance of forcing Steve anywhere he didn't want to go. And he had people back home – Pepper, most of all, but there was Rhodey and Happy and an entire world full of people that didn't know that a reality-devouring dragon from legend and a pan-dimensional alien god were looking to commit... what? Pull a Davros? He didn't know – but it would end in death and darkness. He had to stop it.

"You're an annoying, suicidal _prick,_" he said viciously, blinking perhaps a tad more often than normal.

"Can't be suicidal if I'm already dead," Steve said with an odd mix of grimness and cheerfulness. He pulled Tony into a hug, and Tony couldn't resist clinging on, even though he was grateful for the armour and helmet, keeping him from coming into contact with Steve's bare, dead skin. He would have clung on for longer – but then Steve was stepping back and directing him to stand over to the entrance. He must have been watching when Tony had connected it before, because there was no hesitation in his movements as he pushed the arc reactor back into place. Power flowed back into the bifrost and the walls hummed.

"I just press this button, right?"

"Yeah," Tony said. His throat was dry, but he had to try, one more time – "Please. Steve. Come with?"

"Sorry, Tony," Steve said, smiling a little – maybe at the absurdity of it all. He flicked the activation switch. "Good luck. And just so you know – " Rainbow energy was gathering about Tony, now, bright enough that it made him squint; he couldn't see Steve any more. " – even if you screw up – I love you. Always."

The bifrost beam roared and hurtled him out into the dark. It wasn't any better with the armour protecting him – he felt just as exposed, just as vulnerable. The kickstarting energy from the arc reactor pulled the wormhole to life, but as he'd calculated, most of the power came from someplace _else_ – and there was enough energy around him to rip him apart. The fact that it was ripping space apart instead was not at all reassuring.

The distance was so far that he shouldn't have been able to see anything when he looked back, but he did anyway – and immediately wished he hadn't. The Níðhögg's terrible form swam out from behind Asgard, now of a size with the ruined world, although he knew it wasn't, it _wasn't_. Looking at it full-on was like staring at two contradicting mathematical proofs, ones that he had complete understanding of; the contradiction was not a mistake, it was because logic itself was breaking down. The underpinnings of reality were no longer valid – reality was being eaten, swallowed whole –

The Níðhöggr's teeth closed about Asgard. Tony couldn't look away: his body was frozen, locked silent and still, and he couldn't scream anywhere except in the very back of his mind. Nothing remained between him and the Níðhöggr; he could see all of it, and it was impossible, and glorious, and _ohgodpleaseno_. This was a sight that had driven a god mad, driven him to kill and laugh and lie and all these things were true about Tony, all these things, he didn't want to be Loki, _IamnotLokiPLEASE–_

The bifrost machine disintegrated as the maw crunched shut. About him, the rainbow of light exploded into fire: purple, blue, red, infrared, ultraviolet, microwave, x-ray, radio, gamma, gamma, gamma_gammagamma_. Spectrums he shouldn't have been able to see, but he could, just like he could see the Níðhöggr, the Impossible Thing, could picture it and see how it all fit together. Fire roared all about him, burning up the wreckage of Yggdrasil for fuel, as the bifrost lost its hold on him and he fell.

Something whispered in the back of his head, and Tony wasn't sure if it was him or not, wasn't sure if his mind had finally broken, no longer knew what his own thoughts sounded like. But the message stayed with him as the flames burned redder, hotter, roasting him alive inside the suit. He couldn't breathe; the heat pressed in on him like the Níðhöggr's jaws, everywhere and nowhere, fire and ice. The last splinters of the World Tree burned to nothing and the spectrums of the flames compacted until they fit neatly within a two hundred nanometre spread, only red and orange and nothing else –

_Remember_, the voice said, and then mercifully everything stopped.

* * *

The world _roared_.

Tony's eyes snapped open as he gasped for breath. Right in front of him there was – blue, bright blue, so bright that after a half-life in darkness it seemed blinding – blinding and brilliant and_wonderful_. There was blue and – green? And blond, and that was – that was _Steve_.

The Hulk – it was the Hulk roaring, not the world, Tony realized, as he roared again. There was Steve – the original one, Rogers-Steve, not Steve-Steve – not yet, at least. Thor was there, too, and they were both blond and colourful and alive – "What the hell?" Tony wheezed.

His first thought was to ask JARVIS, but of course there was no power, and for some reason the faceplate of the suit had been torn away – he could feel the rest of the helmet, though, what had_happened_? Where _was_ he? Rogers was still looking down at him, but the expression on his face – that was Steve's expression, one that Rogers had never worn, not when he was looking at Tony. It was fond, relieved -

"What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me," Tony blurted out. The feeling of Steve's dead lips touching his own lingered, and the smell of the frozen saltwater sea washed over him again, frost and decay mingling together. Steve, Steve, Steve – oh, god, he'd left Steve behind. Why the hell had he done that? He should have dragged him along, he should have come up with a way to force Steve to come, he should have -

He should have kissed him back. Pepper would have understood.

The air here smelled like dust. Tony's eyes skittered around, gathering data. Steve was covered in sweat and grime, Thor looked... like he might have a hair out of place, okay, and Hulk still looked triumphant. Those were Chitauri bodies over there – was this the same day as the attack? What the fuck had happened? Asgard had _definitely_ not been a hallucination; Tony had hallucinated before, he dreamed math all the time, but the universe dying around him – that hadn't come out of his own head.

Scans. A simple x-ray could confirm it – unless Loki had been lying when he said he'd removed the shrapnel.

"We won," Steve said – _Rogers_ said. Tony made himself relax, exaggeratedly – neither of the spies were nearby, he didn't have to worry about somebody reading his body language perfectly. Steve could have – but Steve was gone, left behind on a world consumed by that... _thing_.

Rogers' words should have felt like a benediction. They'd won – this battle. But whatever else had happened, whatever he'd seen...

It was on the tip of his tongue to say something. But Steve wasn't here – and if Rogers was a close match, he was still too different. Even worse, Thor – member-of-a-race-of-pan-dimensional-aliens Thor, more-like-a-finger-than-a-brain Thor, was standing right there. "All right, hey!" he said instead, letting his mouth take over and start rambling, start bull-shitting. His brain – his brain he needed to figure out what the hell had happened. Loki was here, but the _wrong_ Loki; killing him might avenge Manhattan but it wouldn't fix the universe – this Loki was nothing more than a distraction. "All right, good job, guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow..." The bifrost schematics flashed through his head: he'd need it, or something like it, in order to have a real chance at tracking down Loki. "...Let's just take a day..."

Tomorrow he'd be busy. He had worlds to repair and a friend to avenge.

* * *

**End Notes**

Many thanks to my content betas, Cyphomandra and V, for helping improve this so much. Also, thank you to Acadecian for proof-reading this. My hat goes off to all of you. Any mistakes that remain are, of course, entirely my own fault.

Constructive criticism is welcomed. In particular, if you notice any formatting errors, please, _please_ let me know, because trying to get it all to save properly (especially on this chapter) took a ridiculous amount of time, and I'm suspicious that it'll still be messed up.

I will be uploading the sequel stories soon; I just need to let my irritation at the formatting difficulties ebb first. _  
_

...

**Notes on comics' canon:**

For those who aren't familiar with the comics, Steve is from a variation on the 616 universe, where he was assassinated at the end of the Civil War event arc. Only apparently the bullets were 'time bullets' and... yeah, it got sort of wonky after that, hence why I say this particular Steve was from a _variation_ on that.

'Clear azure eyes' is a reference to a certain comics panel (I would link, but FFN won't let me) where Tony does, indeed, go on about Steve's 'clear azure eyes'.

'Bob' is Robert Reynolds, aka the Sentry, one of (if not the most) powerful superheroes in the Marvel Universe – when he's capable of it. Reed Richards is Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, a super-genius at-or-above Tony's level. He does a lot of inter-dimensional stuff. After the end of Civil War, he decided to go see how it played out in other realities – and yes, Steve and female!Tony getting married really did prevent Civil War in that reality (again, I'd link if I could). Oh, _comics_.

...

**Notes on Norse mythology:**

I'm not a scholar of Norse mythology; most of my information about the texts discussed below comes from Wikipedia, so there may have been mistakes other than the purposeful ones (of which there were several).

Section 1 is titled after _Gylfaginning_ (the Tricking of Gylfi), which is the first book of the _Prose Edda_ after the prologue. It describes the basic layout I got as far as the journey into (and out of) Hel goes – along with a great deal of other stuff, too, of course; it's twenty thousand words and this was just one part. I picked it as a title for three reasons: 1) It's where this stuff is described and as far as I could determine the individual chapters don't have titles, 2) It is the first book (of three!) and there was other setup in it that I referenced, and 3) Gylfi is supposed to be a framing device. The section that I drew from describes Hel, her hall, Modgud, and the Gjallerbru.

Brynhild is taken from _Helreið Brynhildar_ (Brynhild's Hel-Ride), which is found in the _Poetic Edda._

...

Section 2 is titled after _Thrymskvitha_ (the Lay of Thrym), aka The One Where Thor and Loki Cross-dress. The translation I referenced while writing this is credited to Henry Adams Bellows (my profile page has a link). As well as the descriptions of oxen, I quoted some of the dialogue:

Thrym: _"Bestir ye, giants, put straw on the benches! Now Freyja [I] bring, to be my bride, the daughter of Njorth, out of Noatun!"_

Thrym: _"Many my gems, and many my jewels! Freyja alone did I lack, methinks."_

Thrym: _"Why so fearful, the eyes of Freyja? Fire, methinks, from her eyes burns forth."_

Loki: _"No sleep has Freyja for eight nights found, so hot was her longing for Jotunheim."_

...

Section 3 is titled Ragnarøkkr for reasons that are hopefully obvious.

The three roosters crowing is said in the _Völuspá_ (the Prophecy of the Völva) to herald Ragnarok (or rather, one of its beginning events – liberties taken, etc): an unnamed 'sooty-red cock' crows in Helheim; Fjalar (a crimson rooster) crows in the forest of Gálgviðr ('gallows-wood') in Jotunheim while a jotun herdsman plays a harp; and Gullinkambi (a golden rooster) crows in Valhalla.

Many of the other descriptors of Ragnarok that occur in Section 3 are also taken from the _Völuspá_; the rest are from _Gylfaginning_. In the myths of our world Loki and Heimdall do end up slaying each other (Frigga's version); Tony's version of the myths is some of that AU!Norse mythology mentioned in the tags. There are a few other things that are AU as well, but that's the most blatant one (aside, of course, from Loki being Thor's adopted brother).


End file.
